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US envoy 'encouraged' over Darfur deployment
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Aug 12, 2008 - 6:57:00 AM

US envoy 'encouraged' over Darfur deployment

2 hours ago

KHARTOUM (AFP) — The US envoy to Sudan struck a rare upbeat note over peace efforts in Sudan's Darfur region on Tuesday, saying he was hopeful that the slow pace of deployment of UN peacekeepers would be reversed.

"The current trickle of added peacekeepers is very disappointing," Richard Williamson told reporters after talks with Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor and meetings in Darfur with the leaders of the UN-led peacekeeping operation.

The African Union-United Nations mission in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur, which is known as UNAMID, has struggled to deploy adequate troops and air power in the seven months since going operational on December 31.

"Unfortunately performance has not been acceptable to date. Unfortunately the responsibility rests both here in Sudan and also with the United Nations," Williamson told reporters in Khartoum.

"But we have reasons to be encouraged and hopeful that the pace of the past will be reversed and we will see substantially more UNAMID peacekeepers here to help the people of Darfur in the near future," he said.

Williamson ended his previous visit to Sudan last June, announcing that the United States had suspended talks to improve its difficult relations with the Khartoum government and branded the country uninterested in peace.

"We'll be very disappointed if the pace doesn't pick up substantially. We've had specific plans shared with us, both in New York and in Darfur at UNAMID headquarters for that to take place," he said on Tuesday.

Williamson said he was assured that the Sudanese government was making progress in allocating land for camps and making other infrastructure available.

According to the United Nations, up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003.

Sudan says 10,000 have been killed. US George W. Bush, to whom Williamson reports, has called the violence in Darfur "genocide."

UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said 8,192 soldiers and 1,723 police were on the ground in Darfur -- an increase on recent months but still far below even half the projected total of 19,500 soldiers and 6,500 policemen.

A vanguard of 350 Ethiopian soldiers are to arrive next week to prepare for the arrival of an entire battalion and 126 Egyptian military engineers arrived on Tuesday to pave the way for further Egyptian deployment, Mezni said.

UNAMID still lacks the 24 transport and attack helicopters it says it needs to protect civilians adequately in an area broadly the size of France.

Williamson's visit to Sudan comes with Khartoum on a diplomatic campaign to freeze possible international proceedings against President Omar al-Beshir over alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur.

Without explicitly saying by whom, Williamson said there was a "serious reassessment" on how to energise a peace process in Darfur, at least partly due to the imminent arrival a new international mediator, Djibril Bassole.

"I think the developments in 2008, from a variety of sources, have brought a new focus and attention, and the United States is anxious to be supportive of progress where possible," said Williamson.

"But let me emphasise and this is terribly important. If we're going to get a sustainable peace in Darfur... In the end the sovereign state of Sudan will have to address this issue," he said.

Sudan and the United States, which has no ambassador in Khartoum, conducted talks earlier this year in a bid to improve their diplomatic relations.

Sudan is hoping to be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror, which includes Iran and North Korea, and for Washington to lift economic sanctions that predate, and are related to, the conflict in Darfur.

The Darfur war began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-led Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.