Annan Calls Sudan a Tinderbox
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to back peace in Sudan’s vast Darfur area, saying the crisis there threatened to destabilize the region if attacks on civilians were not stopped.
Sudan reluctantly agreed to the deployment of about 300 African Union troops to protect truce monitors in Darfur.
Fighting in the region blamed on Arab militias has driven more than a million people from their homes and killed as many as 30,000.
The AU is preparing to send hundreds of Nigerian and Rwandan troops to Darfur to guard an eventual 60 African peace monitors and to patrol refugee camps and the border with Chad.
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