Security Council, US slam Darfur attack
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The UN Security Council and the United States Wednesday slammed a recent attack on a supply convoy of UN-African Union troops in Darfur as a senior UN official said Sudan admitted responsibility for the incident.
Libya's UN envoy Giadalla Ettalhi, the council chair this month, said after consultations on Monday's attack in west Darfur that all 15 members "made it clear that the attack on UNAMID (the UN-AU peacekeeping force) was unacceptable and must never happen again."
He added that all members "expressed their condemnation of any aggression on UNAMID or any other peacekeeping forces."
"The United States condemns the January 7 attack by the Sudanese Armed Forces on United Nations peacekeepers who were traveling in a supply convoy in Darfur," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.
Saying the attack "against peacekeepers in white vehicles clearly displaying UN markings is unacceptable," he said in a statement that it "demonstrates the need for a stronger arms embargo for Sudan."
Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the UN peacekeeping department, told the council that a Sudanese area commander had confirmed that "a Sudanese armed force unit fired upon a clearly marked UNAMID convoy" in west Darfur.
But earlier Wednesday, Sudan's UN envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad instead blamed Chad-backed rebels for Monday's attack.
He pointed the finger at Darfur rebels of the Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) which he claimed was strongly supported by the Chadian government.
The council was expected to adopt a US-drafted statement formally condemning the attack.
Guehenno said the "disturbing" attack showed that the Darfur situation was "very volatile, very dangerous" and that "that we need strong capacities that we do not have."
UNAMID, which took over from an African Union mission on January 1, did not return fire or sustain troop casualties in the attack, and said it was investigating the incident jointly with Sudan.
"If we had had helicopters capable of flying at night and quickly reinforcing a convoy under attack, of course we would have been in a position to deter, probably the attack would never have occurred," Guehenno said.
He renewed his plea to member states to provide 24 crucial transport and light attack helicopters for UNAMID and for Khartoum to end its apparent foot-dragging in approving key non-African contingents for the force.
The UN official said Khartoum had formally rejected assigning a Scandinavian engineering unit to UNAMID and had yet to approve a Thai infantry battalion and two Nepalese special forces contingents.
Wednesday, Sweden and Norway said they had withdrawn their offer to contribute 400 troops for the Scandinavian engineering unit which was to have helped build up Darfur's infrastructure in the early stages of the mission.
When fully deployed, UNAMID is to become the UN's largest peacekeeping operation with 20,000 troops and 6,000 police and civilian personnel.
But only around 9,000 troops and police are currently in place.
Guehenno also said UN chief Ban Ki-moon discussed technical hurdles with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir over the weekend and that the two leaders would continue their discussions at the AU summit in Addis Ababa later this month.
The UN official also expressed concern about an upsurge of fighting along the Chad-Sudan border.
"The recent upsurge in fighting in Eastern Chad and West Darfur and the mobilization of JEM and Sudanese forces around Geneina are a cause of grave concern. This sends an extremely negative signal with regards to the prospects for a political settlement to the crisis in Darfur," he added.
Monday, Chadian air force planes attacked a Chadian rebel base across the border, southwest of El-Geneina in Darfur, Chadian officials said.
Sudan said Monday that Chadian aircraft had bombed positions in the west of strife-torn Darfur early Sunday, killing and wounding civilians.
The attack followed a threat Saturday by Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno to pursue and strike Chadian rebels inside neighboring Sudan and repeated charges that Khartoum was trying to destabilize his country.
At least 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and diseases and more than two million have fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated regime in February 2003.
