SUDAN:A breakthrough agreement to deploy a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur risks being undermined by a shortfall of up to $1 billion (€750 million) in US contributions to global peacekeeping, campaigners said yesterday.
A UN delegation announced on Sunday that Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, had agreed at talks in Khartoum to allow the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN and African Union hybrid force by next year.
The deal ended months of wrangling and followed a direct threat by president George Bush to impose more sanctions on the Sudanese government.
At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur, western Sudan, and an estimated 2.5 million have been displaced since fighting between government-backed militias and rebel forces erupted in 2003. Diplomats who attended the Khartoum talks said they expected the new Darfur force, which will be under UN command, would be paid for from the UN peacekeeping budget.
But former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, warned Congress last week that the proposed Darfur deployment, and other current or future UN operations, were being jeopardised by mounting US debts.
"As of June 2007 the US was $569 million in permanent arrears to the UN for UN peacekeeping," Mr Wirth said. "The administration's budget request for the UN peacekeeping account for fiscal year 2008 [ beginning in October this year] was found to be short by an additional estimated $500 million. If this is left unaddressed, US arrears to the UN will exceed $1 billioby the end of 2007 for peacekeeping alone," Mr Wirth said.
Deborah Derrick, executive director of the Better World Campaign, said the new Darfur agreement was threatened by the Bush administration's failure to pay its dues. "If the plan is to put pressure on Sudan's government but the US is unwilling to back it up, it absolutely undermines the credibility of the whole operation," Ms Derrick said.
Public pressure on the government to pay was growing, she added. More than 32,000 people had signed an online petition calling on Congress to pay its UN dues, at www.priceofpeace.org. - (Guardian service)