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Britain urges UN sanctions on Sudan over Darfur
13 Mar 2007 22:39:56 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Clarifies possible sanctions, adds quotes, paragraph 4-6)

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 (Reuters) - Britain wants the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Sudan after Khartoum put a slew of conditions on U.N. plans to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur, the British ambassador said on Tuesday.

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with a variety of conditions on U.N. proposals to bolster the 7,000-member African Union force, now in Darfur.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said it was time to put pressure on Sudan because Bashir was "reopening a carefully negotiated agreement."

"The council must respond to this continued provocation. It is time the council considered further sanctions. President Bashir is reneging on the agreements he reached with the A.U. and the U.N.," Jones Parry said.

"Progress in Darfur is overdue in providing security to the people of Darfur and in energizing the political forces to get the rebel groups to accept the Darfur Peace Agreement," negotiated last year between Khartoum and one rebel faction.

The sanctions, which the European Union has already advocated, could include a no-fly zone over Darfur, broadening an arms embargo and adding to a list of four people subject to an assets freeze and travel ban, diplomats said.

The Security Council imposed an arms embargo on rebels and militia in March 2004 but not on Sudan's government. A year later the council listed four people subject to a freeze of assets and a travel embargo, which has not had any impact.

South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, this month's Security Council president, said Bashir's letter would be the main topic of a council lunch with Ban on Thursday.

"The secretary-general did express his regret that the letter and contents of the entire document seemed to raise questions about some of the issues that the secretary-general had assumed had already been agreed," Kumalo said of his conversation with Ban.

Bashir based his objections on the Darfur Peace Agreement of last May, barely touching on a much more recent agreement he endorsed in November that left troop planning to the African Union and the United Nations.

At issue is an interim plan of some 3,000 U.N. personnel, mainly engineers, logistics and medical units as well as helicopter pilots. They would prepare for a larger African Union-U.N. operation of more than 22,000 troops and police.

But the Sudanese leader made clear that until the interim arrangement was in place he would not discuss the larger troop deployment, dashing hopes that U.N. peacekeepers could be deployed soon.

Bashir said U.N. troops and international police would best be confined to camps for uprooted people and should only monitor women from the camps collecting firewood. The women are frequently raped by pro-Khartoum militia.

On attack helicopters, he said they should only be used to protect African Union troops and "not include the protection of civilians, which pursuant to the Darfur Peace Agreement, is the responsibility of the Sudanese police."
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A Chadian army child soldier is seen in Am Timan in this October 2006 photo. Chad pledged on May 9, 2007 to work to demobilise hundreds of child soldiers fighting in the ranks of the government army and rebel groups across the conflict-torn central African country. Picture taken October 2006.



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