U.S. Envoy to Press Sudan for U.N. Peacekeepers in Darfur

After months of increasingly belligerent refusals by Sudan to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force into the Darfur region, the Bush administration said Thursday that it was sending a senior diplomat to Khartoum to pressure the Sudanese government to accept international troops.

The mission, which is scheduled to leave Washington today, comes as Darfur has experienced its most intense violence in more than two years. Sudanese officials are threatening to send 10,000 troops to the troubled region to suppress rebel groups, a move human rights groups fear could reignite the region’s civil war.

“The government of Sudan believes that somehow it can solve this problem on its own, and that’s not the case,” said Jendayi E. Frazer, the State Department’s assistant secretary for African affairs, who will head the mission. “We have reports every day that the government of Sudan is preparing to launch an offensive” against the rebels. “That’s not acceptable,” she said.

The Bush administration had hoped a U.S.-brokered peace accord in May between the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and one of the largest non-Arab rebel groups in Darfur would pave the way for the 20,000-strong United Nations force and a lasting peace.

Instead, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir has become more vehement in his rejections. He recently likened a potential U.N. deployment to Israel’s incursion into Lebanon. In addition, non-Arab rebels who did not sign the agreement have broken off and begun to rearm in preparation for a government offensive.

An ill-equipped force of 7,000 African Union troops is in Darfur, a region of western Sudan, assigned to monitor the May peace accord. But the force has found itself under siege -- two Rwandan peacekeepers were killed this month -- and could be routed if all-out war were to resume. Its mandate and funding run out at the end of September.

“The capacity of the African Union is declining every single day, so there is no time to delay,” Frazer said. “Right now, they’re sitting ducks.”

The unrest in Darfur broke out in early 2003 when rebels from non-Arab tribes attacked a Sudanese army post in the region. The government is believed to have helped arm a group of Arab-dominated militia, the janjaweed, to put down the uprising. The fighters unleashed extensive bloodshed in the region, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths and displacing more than 2 million people. Khartoum denies backing the militia.

The U.S. government has labeled the attacks genocide.

Frazer said she would carry a message from President Bush to the Sudanese government urging acceptance of a U.N. force. Under the U.S.-backed plan, many of the African Union troops would be “re-hatted,” becoming the core of the U.N. force, which would include 15,000 to 18,000 soldiers and 3,500 police officers. About 5,200 would be ready to deploy this fall, Frazer said.

The U.S. and Britain last week introduced a resolution to the U.N. Security Council that would give the council’s imprimatur to the new peacekeeping force. But China, which has substantial oil investments in Sudan, and Russia have balked at the resolution, citing Bashir’s rejections.

The Security Council invited Sudan’s foreign minister to a meeting Monday in New York with the African Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League to explain his nation’s objections.

But the Sudanese government refused and asked the council for a postponement.

U.S. officials have rejected a lengthy postponement, concerned that Sudan would use the delay to launch its offensive into Darfur.

“We have never, ever in the U.N. Security Council allowed a government to tell us that we cannot pass a resolution,” Frazer said. “No country has ever had a veto over the Security Council expressing its will, and so that can’t be an excuse.”