(Adds current force in Sudan, paragraph 4)

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 (Reuters) - The United Nations has enough pledges for infantry soldiers, mainly from Africa, for the new Darfur force but needs specialists and attack helicopters from rich nations, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

The "hybrid" U.N.-African Union operation aims to protect civilians in Sudan's Darfur region, where more than 2.1 million people have been driven into camps and an estimated 200,000 have died in the past four years. The operation is expected to cost more than $2 billion a year plus start-up costs.

The U.N. Security Council last month authorized up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police, which would be the world's largest peacekeeping force. Another 4,000 to 5,000 local and international civilians are anticipated for a hybrid force of more than 30,000 personnel in Darfur.

That would mean a total of about 40,000 peacekeepers in Sudan because a U.N. force is already deployed in the south of the country to monitor a peace agreement between Khartoum and former rebels.

The task in Darfur is daunting, with limited water supplies, sand storms and the nearest seaport in Port Sudan, more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) from Darfur, Jane Holl Lute, the assistant secretary-general in peacekeeping told reporters.

"It is remote, it is austere. There are very scarce water resources," Lute said at a news conference.

In October, the United Nations hopes to have set up a headquarters for the joint force, which will absorb the 7,000 African Union troops now in Darfur. The full transition to the hybrid force is expected by Dec. 31.

AFRICA TROOPS

The largest offers of new infantry troops have come from Rwanda, Ethiopia and Egypt, all African nations, with pledges from Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda as well as Asians Bangladesh, Jordan, Malaysia, Nepal and Thailand, U.N. officials said.

Police units are pledged from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and Pakistan.

"We are meeting the objective of a predominantly African force," said Lute, a retired U.S. army officer and lawyer.

The initial list of troop contributors included no industrial nations, although Lute said she had received "initial expressions of willingness."

Boots on the ground, she said, were not a problem but the operation needed attack helicopters, engineers and people who could supply and drive huge rigs of cargo from Port Sudan in the northeast to Darfur in the west.

In a conference call with reporters, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, said regions outside Africa would have to be tapped for military personnel.

He warned Khartoum, which was slow to agree to the force and has said most troops should come from Africa, against opposing non-African troops and repeated a U.S. threat of sanctions it failed to implement previous agreements.

The United States will not send military personnel. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Washington would help with hiring companies to build barracks for the peacekeepers and transport to get troops to Darfur.

The council's July resolution invokes Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, under which the United Nations can authorize force. The measure allows the use of force for self-defense, to ensure the free movement of humanitarian workers and to protect civilians under attack, but acknowledges Sudan's sovereignty.

But the watered-down resolution did not allow the new force to seize and dispose of illegal arms, saying it can only monitor such weapons.

(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington)

AlertNet news is provided by