KHARTOUM (AFP) — President Omar al-Beshir on Friday defended Sudan against Western criticism that Khartoum was delaying the deployment of a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping force in war-torn Darfur.
"We are not holding up this mission. Those who want to impose non-African forces on us are holding it up," he told reporters as his National Congress party wound up a three-day conference.
The UN has warned that the joint force of more than 26,000 soldiers, due to take over early next year from 7,000 poorly-equipped AU troops, may fail without the required air mobility and firepower.
The United States has directly accused Sudan of "foot-dragging and obstruction" over the joint peacekeeping force.
Beshir said his country had accepted Chinese, Egyptian and Indian contingents despite the UN trying to impose Scandinavian and Thai troops.
He said the initial agreement had been only for African troops and charged that African countries had volunteered enough soldiers to make up the entire AU-UN force.
The force is tasked with ending more than four years of bloodshed in which more than 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease in Darfur while 2.2 million others have been left homeless.
Beshir was also sceptical about a proposal to hold an international meeting in Rome to resolve differences between north and south, saying the peace deal that both sides signed in 2005 provided "mechanisms to solve crises".
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which administers the south, walked out of the Khartoum government in October, accusing northerners of defaulting on the peace agreement that ended Africa's longest running civil war.
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