Bush urges UN to act quickly on Darfur

WASHINGTON—U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday the United Nations should send a peacekeeping force to the troubled Darfur region of Sudan without further delay.
"The United Nations can play an important role in helping us achieve our objective, which is to end human suffering and deprivation," Bush said as he dispatched special envoy Andrew Natsios to the region. "In my view, the United Nations should not wait any longer.''
The Sudanese government has thus far resisted mounting international pressure to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur. Bush contends the UN should deploy such a force anyway.
A three-year conflict in the Darfur region has killed roughly 200,000 people and displaced millions of others.
Natsios said he had been going to Sudan for 17 years and "I know leaders in all regions of the country and I'm going to use those contacts and that history to move this process along.
"I think what our objective is, is not just to have a temporary fix for two months, but to try to deal with the root causes of this so we don't have another fourth war in five years, should we end this one successfully," Natsios said.
Sudan is also opposed to the unlimited extension of African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, a Sudanese official said yesterday as top officials from the European Union and AU met in Addis Ababa to discuss ways of bolstering peacekeeping in Darfur.
The official said Sudan agrees that the "African Union troops stay until the crisis is over, but not indefinitely."
The mandate for African forces in Darfur expires at the end of the year, and European Commission aid chief Louis Michel said the AU needs increased UN support if it is to continue.
The EU is the biggest financial contributor to the AU mission in Darfur.
Aid officials and diplomats, fearing the possibility of a security vacuum in Darfur if African forces leave, have begun discussing an option for an enhanced African role in Darfur.
Violence in Darfur has increased since a peace deal was signed in May between the Sudanese government and one rebel group. The deal has fractured rebel groups and fuelled tensions as all sides try to make territorial gains ahead of possible international intervention.
Weekend clashes among rebel groups forced international aid agencies, except for the International Red Cross, to flee the Greida refugee camp in southern Darfur, a Western aid worker said.
"The fighting was about a mile from Greida. It was heavy ... with mortars and artillery," the aid worker said.
London's Guardian newspaper reported that up to 40 people were killed when fighters loyal to the Justice and Equality Movement attacked men from a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army which signed the peace deal. But an AU spokesman in Khartoum put the death toll at 11 people.