UN extends Sudan peacekeeping mission

The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to extend the mandate of peacekeepers monitoring a deal that ended a 21-year civil war in southern Sudan.

US ambassador John Bolton said last night the council decided on a two-week extension, with the intention of extending it further after that expired, after the African Union Peace and Security Council agreed on Wednesday to keep its 7,000-strong force in conflict-wracked Darfur in western Sudan until the end of the year.

The AU’s decision averted a showdown over Sudan’s refusal to permit the United Nations to take over the mission in Darfur and triple its size.

Bolton said the extension until October 8 would give the council time to consider a variety of steps that might be taken, including British prime minister Tony Blair’s proposal for a heads of state meeting on Sudan.

The short renewal of the mandate, set to expire tomorrow, would also provide additional time “to build up momentum and pressure on the government in Khartoum to accept the inevitability that there’s going to be a UN peacekeeping force”, Bolton said.

Sudan president Omar al-Bashir has refused to allow UN peacekeepers to take over from the overstretched and ill-equipped AU force, despite intense pressure from many countries in Africa and around the world. He maintains a UN force in Darfur would violate Sudan’s sovereignty and be part of a Western conspiracy to break up Sudan.

British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said the African Union’s decision had “averted a security vacuum”. But she warned that the war-torn Sudanese province remained in crisis.

“It can only be a temporary reprieve,” Mrs Beckett said in her speech to the UN General Assembly. “We also need action immediately on the political and humanitarian front.”

She also stressed that the stability of Sudan rested ultimately with al-Bashir, saying: “It is, above all, his responsibility.”

The United Nations already has more than 11,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Sudan monitoring a January 2005 peace agreement between the country’s mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south, in which some 2 million people died. The Sudanese government has welcomed this force.