Four related stories from today (updated originally to add the one from the AP/Dow Jones [thanks to Eugene]; updated further to add the one from VOA):
(See also, most recently, yesterday's pair.)
From Reuters...
Sudan said on Wednesday the African Union (AU) had no authority to transfer its troubled peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of western Sudan to the United Nations.
If the African organisation abandons the mission, the AU troops would withdraw and no one could replace them without the approval of the Sudanese government, a Sudanese junior minister told the AU's Peace and Security Council.
The AU mission expires on Sept. 30 and the U.N. Security Council last month passed a resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur. The Sudanese government has rejected the U.N. resolution.
Al-Samani al-Wasiyla, minister for state for foreign affairs, said: "All the African Union can do if its mission failed for any reason is to withdraw from Sudan and it cannot hand over its duties to any party except the government."
"There is no provision in the protocol establishing the African Union Peace and Security Council that allows the African Union to transfer its mandate to the United Nations", he added.
He disputed the argument that the AU would have to give up the Darfur mission because of financial problems, saying that money was available from the Arab League.
At an Arab summit in Khartoum in March, Arab leaders promised to fund the AU operation from October onwards.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes in three years of rape, killing and pillage in Darfur, in the far west of the country.
Wasiyla said the U.N. resolution on Darfur was a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of his country.
"(It) gives the U.N. the mandate to intervene in restructuring Sudanese police and set up an independent judicial system. No government on earth would accept such a flagrant violations to its independence and sovereignty," he said.
From AFP, reprinted on Sudan.Net...
Sudan Wednesday again rejected plans for the United Nations to take over peacekeeping in Darfur from the cash-strapped African Union force whose mandate expires at the end of the month.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs El-Wasilla Al Samani said Khartoum would have no option but to bid farewell to the AU force as it leaves on September 30 and assume the peace operations in Darfur, a war-ravaged region in western Sudan the size of France.
"The government of Sudan has not accepted and will not accept UN peacekeepers," Al Wasila told reporters after meeting with the AU's Peace and Security Council.
"In the case they decide to transfer their mandate to the UN, we will say farewell to them and would take over our responsibility as a government, we are not a failing state," he added.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution two weeks ago urging the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur to replace the ill-equipped and poorly funded AU forces.
But Al Samani insisted that the question of cash need not arise as the Sudanese government had secured funding from the Arab League and reached agreements with the Darfur rebels.
Khartoum instead favours extending the mandate of the pan-African body in Darfur.
"If they say that their reason to go is lack of money, we say the money is there, we will give it to you. If they say there is need to be a peace agreement, it is there, it has been signed," he said.
The combined effect of war and famine in Darfur has left up to 300,000 people dead and displaced 2.5 million in three and half years of civil war, pitting the Sudanese government and allied militias against ethnic minority rebels.
Sudan formally called on the African Union Wednesday to pull its peacekeepers out of Darfur by the end of the month if it continues to support a U.N. takeover of the mission.
A 7,000-strong AU force is now in the western region of Sudan but is understaffed, starved of cash and eager to hand over to the U.N. Its mandate expires at the end of the month.
"If the AU wants to transfer the mission to the U.N., then they have to pack up their troops and leave by the September 30," Al-Samani Al-Wasila, Sudan's junior foreign affairs minister, told journalists after meeting with AU officials in Addis Ababa.
Sudan first took this stance last week, with Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kerti saying the AU force can remain in Darfur only if it accepts Arab League and Sudanese funding. He gave the AU a week to agree or get its troops out, according to a September 4 government statement.
Al-Wasila said Wednesday the AU doesn't have the authority to transfer the mission and if the 53-member bloc is short of funding, then money can be provided from the Arab League.
The U.N. has been trying to persuade Sudan to allow it to take over the AU peacekeeping force, which has been unable to stop the violence.
But Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir repeatedly has rejected the proposal, and has said his army would fight any U.N. forces sent to Darfur.
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-general Kofi Annan urged swift intervention by a U.N. peacekeeping force to ease the mounting humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
After years of low-level clan clashes over resources in the impoverished region, ethnic African rebels rose up in 2003, seeking more autonomy in Darfur. The Arab-dominated Sudanese government has been accused of unleashing Arab militiamen known as janjaweed who have been blamed for widespread atrocities, including rapes and killings.
More than 200,000 people have died from war and starvation in Darfur since fighting erupted in February 2003, and Annan said 1.9 million have been displaced.
The violence only escalated after a peace agreement was hammered out in May in Abuja, Nigeria. Only one of several rebel groups signed along with the government, and some of the renewed fighting was blamed on intrarebel disputes.
Annan portioned plenty of blame for Darfur's current plight on the Sudanese government, demanding it halt an offensive launched August 28 to flush out rebel strongholds in Darfur and warning it would suffer "opprobrium and disgrace" if it doesn't.
Al-Wasila denied Khartoum had launched a fresh offensive.
The AU's Peace and Security Council will meet Sept. 18 in New York, just before this year's General Assembly meeting, to discuss how to break the deadlock in Darfur.
Said Djinnit, the AU Peace and Security commissioner, said at the end of the closed door talks that the Sudanese wanted to make their position clear before the New York meeting.
From VOA...
Sudan says the African Union must pull its peacekeepers from Darfur by September 30 if it continues to support a U.N. takeover of the mission.
A Sudanese foreign affairs representative, El-Wasilla Al Samani, spoke to reporters Wednesday after meeting with AU officials in Addis Ababa.
The AU has signaled a readiness to hand over its Darfur mission to U.N. control. But Sudan's government has said it will fight any U.N. peacekeepers who enter the war-torn region.
Seven-thousand African peacekeepers have not been able to keep the peace in Darfur, where more than three years of fighting has killed an estimated 200,000 people.
The U.N. Security Council has approved plans to absorb the AU force and expand it to 20,000 troops.
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