Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today he expected Sudan's consent soon for a joint force of United Nations and African Union peacekeepers to help quell violence in the Darfur region.
Mr Annan said he had received encouraging reports from his envoy in Khartoum, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who had spoken to Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
But he told the UN Security Council in a farewell speech that he took nothing for granted after "so many disappointments," so the United Nations first needed to see the document that Ould-Abdallah would bring.
Mr Annan, who leaves office December 31st, said the reports he had received "encourage me to think we may tomorrow (Saturday) receive a green light from from President Bashir."
He said he expected Bashir to agree "to a full cease-fire, a renewed effort to bring all parties into the political process, and deployment of the proposed hybrid African Union-United Nations force to protect the population."
The United Nations has been trying without success to persuade Bashir to accept deployment of a mixed United Nations-African Union force in Darfur, building on the ill-equipped 7,000 African Union troops already there.
Bashir has rejected outright a purely UN force called for in a UN Security Council resolution passed on August 31st, which proposed up to 22,500 troops and police, saying it violated Khartoum's sovereignty and was a colonialist plot.
At least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced, many living in arid camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad, since early 2003 in fighting between rebel groups and the government aided by brutal militia. Ould-Abdallah carried a letter from Mr Annan to Bashir, circulated on Thursday, that said a cease-fire was "imperative because of the increase in violence in the past few weeks.
Mr Annan said African troops would be used to the extent possible, after which other countries would be asked to help. The overall mission in Darfur would be led by a special representative appointed jointly by the United Nations and the African Union, Mr Annan said. The force commander, who would exercise operational control over the military aspects of the mission, would report to that special representative.