August 31, 2006

U.N. Council Votes to Send Troops to Darfur; Sudan Objects

Link: U.N. Council Votes to Send Troops to Darfur; Sudan Objects - New York Times.

The Security Council passed a resolution Thursday authorizing the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force for the ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, but the resolution calls for the consent of the Sudanese government before troops can be deployed. Sudanese officials immediately rejected the resolution. A senior adviser to President Omar al-Bashir told Al Jazeera television that the resolution was illegal and violated the peace accord signed by the government and one of the rebel factions.

But State Department officials were quick to say the resolution did not explicitly require Sudan’s consent. “This resolution invites Sudanese consent,” Kristen Silverberg, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, said at a briefing in Washington after the vote. “Nothing requires Sudanese consent.”

The proposed United Nations force is to include a military force of up to 17,300 members and a civilian police force of 3,300. It would replace or absorb the 7,000-member African Union force in Darfur, which has been hamstrung by financial and logistical problems and has failed to halt the slide into violence that President Bush has called genocide.

Posted by Anupam Chander on August 31, 2006 at 08:42 PM in Globalization | Permalink