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Sudan peacekeepers sought

BY TINA SUSMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

May 9, 2006

Sudan's president still has not accepted the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops in the country's war-torn Darfur region, Bush administration officials said yesterday, something that could hinder implementation of a deal to end the 3-year-old conflict.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to address the United Nations Security Council today and press for a UN resolution to speed up deployment of peacekeepers to enforce the accord, which was signed Friday.

In Washington, President George W. Bush announced he had ordered the purchase of 40,000 metric tons of food and was dispatching five ships to carry it to Sudan.

The assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, said the administration envisioned a force of at least 14,000 - about twice the number of African Union troops in Darfur now. Bush telephoned Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir yesterday to press him to drop his long-standing resistance to a UN presence, Frazer said in a telephone interview with journalists, but got only a promise to consider it.

Neither Frazer nor Cindy Courville, the National Security Council's director of African affairs, would say what Bush might do if al-Bashir blocked UN deployment, as he has done for several months. Instead, al-Bashir has allowed a force of African Union soldiers operating under a limited mandate into Darfur, but they have been unable to curb violence or protect civilians, 2 million of whom have been driven from their homes into camps around Darfur.

International health and aid organizations say as many as 400,000 people, mainly civilians, have died since the war began in February 2003, pitting the pro-Arab government and allied militias against rebels who allege discrimination against non-Arabs in Darfur.

The Bush administration two years ago accused al-Bashir's government of genocide in the region, and it led last month's last-ditch negotiations to bring about a peace plan. The deal calls for an immediate cease-fire and the disarmament of pro-government militias by October. However, it was rejected by two of the three main rebel groups, who said it did not go far enough to address their demands for power-sharing and security guarantees.

Anger over the African Union's ineffectiveness and the government's actions in Darfur erupted into rage yesterday at Kalma, Darfur's biggest camp for war victims. Residents attacked an African Union post in Kalma and killed a Sudanese translator working with the troops. Earlier, residents had tried to attack a translator traveling with the UN's chief humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, as they toured Kalma.

Egeland and the translator escaped unharmed, but the violence underscored the difficulties of enforcing a peace plan in Darfur, where civilians remain deeply distrustful of the government because of violations of an April 2004 cease-fire, and because of its opposition to UN troops.

Closer look at the crisis in Darfur

Newsday has begun a special focus on Darfur, based on a recent six-week trip to Sudan by reporter Tina Susman and photographer J. Conrad Williams. An explanatory two-page Fold will run Thursday, and a three-part series will start Sunday.

The first day will tell the story of the victims of the war - and LI Life will devote its cover to how one public school is teaching about such humanitarian catastrophes. The focus Monday will be on the world's inaction. On Sunday, May 21, Newsday examines the aftermath of the north-south war.