UN Council hears pleas and threats in Darfur
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-06-10 17:04
The U.N. Security Council heard strong opposition on Friday to a robust
United Nations force in Darfur and was told a recent peace pact had stoked
violence within squalid camps for homeless war victims.
One tribal leader even threatened a jihad, or holy war, if non-African troops
came to Sudan's vast western region and the governor of North Darfur made clear
his resistance to U.N. peacekeepers.
"The peace agreement divided the camps into two. Antagonizing those who
haven't signed the peace agreement has not helped," Jan Pronk, the top U.N.
envoy in Sudan warned the 15 council members visiting Sudan for the first time.
The council, which authorizes peacekeeping missions, called off its planned
trip to the Abu Shouk camp near this North Darfur town because of security
risks.
Instead the 15 members met more than a dozen representatives from the camps
behind closed doors as well as relief workers, government and tribal leaders who
told them heartbreaking stories but also criticized the visitors.
"It brought home to people why one had to do this," Britain's U.N. Ambassador
Emyr Jones Parry, head of the U.N. delegation, said of U.N involvement in
Darfur, noting the cries for humanitarian help in a region where only some 30
percent of the children attended school.
On May 5, the government and the largest rebel group in Darfur signed a peace
agreement, negotiated by the African Union, but two other factions refused to
sign.
While the door is left open for other factions to sign, the rebels have been
fighting each other instead of the government, creating more mayhem in Darfur,
where at least 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million are homeless.
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