By Glenn Kessler and Craig Timberg
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 1, 2006
The U.N. Security Council yesterday approved a long-sought resolution that would place an expanded peacekeeping force in Sudan's troubled Darfur region under U.N. authority, even as the government appeared to have begun a new offensive against rebel forces.
The new U.N. mandate would take effect only with Sudan's consent, and its president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, immediately rejected it. Officials in Khartoum have repeatedly said that they favor the current African force, under the auspices of the African Union, instead of one from the United Nations.
The African Union, however, favors the transfer of control to the United Nations, saying it is unable to keep the peace and will soon run out of funds.
The stalemate over the troops and the new outbreak of fighting appeared to signal the failure of a peace deal reached three months ago that was hailed by the Bush administration as the key to resolving the conflict. Only one rebel group, with little support from the population, signed the agreement, and it has joined forces with Sudanese troops in an effort to crush ethnic African tribes challenging the Arab-led Khartoum government.
The peace agreement was brokered by Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, but he has since left the government, as have many of his key advisers on Sudan.
The Darfur conflict broke out in early 2003 when African rebel groups attacked police stations and military outposts. The United Nations and human rights groups accuse the central government of supporting militiamen, called the Janjaweed, in an effort to crush the rebellion.
About 2,000 villages have been destroyed across Darfur; violence and disease have left as many as 450,000 people dead and 2 million homeless. Two years ago, the Bush administration accused Bashir's government of abetting genocide.
The peace agreement, rather than ending the fighting, appears to have rekindled it. There are widespread reports of the major rearming of government forces and the two rebel groups that did not sign the peace deal. They have since joined forces and have apparently acquired shoulder-fired missiles.
The rebel group led by Minni Minnawi -- who met with President Bush at the White House in July, after he signed the May peace deal -- has, in effect, become a paramilitary arm of the government. Growing numbers of Land Rover vehicles and Toyota trucks with machine guns have been reported in northern Darfur.
Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi E. Frazer flew to Khartoum this week to persuade Bashir to change his mind on the U.N. force, dangling the possibility of a meeting with Bush if Bashir accepted. Bashir made Frazer wait three days before he saw her, and he signaled that he had not changed his mind. But Frazer said yesterday that she was "very confident" Bashir would ultimately accept.
The U.N. resolution would create a peacekeeping force of as many as 22,500 military and police personnel, compared with the 7,000 currently serving under the African Union in an area the size of France. The U.N. force would also have a much stronger mandate to prevent an outbreak of violence.
About 5,000 members of the African Union force could be immediately placed under U.N. authority, but officials have not yet determined which countries would provide the rest.
The resolution was approved by a vote of 12 to 0, with China, Russia and Qatar abstaining. Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg said the abstentions were "inexplicable, in light of the very grave and serious and deteriorating security situation." But Chinese and Russian officials said they wanted Sudan's consent before the resolution was adopted, out of concern that the move might result in even more bloodshed.
John Prendergast of the nonprofit International Crisis Group, who was in Darfur over the weekend, said there has been a major new government offensive there in recent days. ""It has already started," said Prendergast, who has returned to his office in Washington.
Rebel commander Abubakar Hamid Nur, speaking by satellite phone from northern Darfur, said that government Antonov planes have been bombing villages as dozens of government gun trucks and thousands of troops have moved north from the provincial capital of El Fasher. Nur said the rebels have been retreating rather than clash with better-equipped government troops.
But he predicted an outright battle in the days ahead. Many of the civilians who were attacked have left on camels and horses to gather weapons.
"The coming days, there will be very big fighting in Darfur," Nur said. He said the government offensive is an effort to grab land in anticipation of the U.N. force eventually arriving. "They are killing and dancing over the skeletons of the people of Darfur," Nur said.
Major new fighting in northern regions of Darfur began Tuesday, according to Sam Ibok, an African Union official in Khartoum overseeing the implementation of the Darfur peace deal. Ibok said more than 20 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 have been displaced, according to reports from affected areas. Those areas, he added, are beyond where African Union troops can travel safely.
"It's like a 'no-go' area for our forces," he said. Ibok said the fighting of the past three days was the worst so far this year. "The magnitude of this has not been reported before. This represents some kind of escalation," he said.
Manuel da Silva, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, predicted a steady deterioration in food, clean water and medical care in the weeks ahead as aid groups retreat from the countryside in northern Darfur because of the growing danger.
But Rabie Abdul Atti, a senior adviser to Sudan's information minister, said the recent violence is strictly between rebel groups that signed the pact and those that had not. "The government has taken no part in the fighting at all," Atti said.
Prendergast, who said he "could not point to anything good happening now" in Darfur, criticized the administration's strategy of offering incentives to Sudan's government rather than pressuring Khartoum with sanctions or possible war crimes indictments. He said that the peace agreement is terribly flawed, and that the departure of Zoellick and his aides left U.S. policy in limbo.
"The Darfur Peace Agreement is allowing the government to resume the war," Prendergast said. "This is a grotesque abuse of the intentions of those who crafted the peace deal back in May."
Timberg reported from Khartoum, Sudan.
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