Peacekeepers should prepare to leave Darfur: Sudan

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Khartoum's U.N. envoy, rejecting a bleak U.N. assessment of the situation in Sudan's conflict-torn western Darfur region, said on Monday it was time for international peacekeepers to prepare to leave.

Saying it omitted key information, Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, criticized the latest report about Darfur by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which says Khartoum has broken a deal on deploying the peacekeepers.

"One big fact should be the focus of the report -- that the war is over," he told Reuters. "With peace in sight, the U.N. should, in coordination with the African Union and Sudanese government, plan for an exit strategy."

The U.N.-AU mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, has been fraught with difficulties. For nearly two years, the mission's commanders have faced bureaucratic delays and other obstacles in deploying the 26,000 peacekeepers approved by the U.N. Security Council.

Ban's new report says there are now close to 20,000 troops and police deployed in Darfur, the site of what U.N. officials say is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

The report also accuses Sudan of harassing and limiting movements of UNAMID personnel in breach of an agreement with Khartoum on their deployment.

"The repeated incidents of government officials preventing access to UNAMID patrols are a direct violation of the Status of Forces Agreement with the government of the Sudan and a serious impediment to the mission's capacity to implement its mandate," Ban said in the report.

The harassment included bureaucratic delays, warning shots fired at UNAMID, weapons pointed at convoys and Sudanese army helicopters flying low over UNAMID "in a threatening manner."