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| March 30, 2008 |
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Saturday offered to provide up to nine military officers for the planned peace force for Darfur as he slammed Khartoum's lack of cooperation.
Speaking to reporters after a one-hour meeting with UN chief Ban Ki-moon here, he said he informed his host that Canberra would make available up to nine military officers to the joint UN-African Union force known as UNAMID.
"The government of Sudan generally has not welcomed any more substantial military commitments from Western powers," he noted. "I regard that as unfortunate but that is the reality."
Rudd also pledged an additional five million dollars in humanitarian assistance to the people of Darfur.
And he expressed to Ban "our concern and frustration together with that of other states about the continued obstruction ... by the government of Sudan."
Calling the festering conflict in Sudan's western region "a continuing humanitarian tragedy," he stressed that "the international community has a responsibility to act."
"Our government is of the view that these matters soon need to be brought back to the UN Security Council so that the government of Sudan can be held properly to account for its continuing obstruction."
Khartoum has been accused by Western powers of dragging its feet on allowing the full deployment of UNAMID which is tasked with providing assistance and protection for beleaguered Darfur civilians.
When fully deployed, UNAMID is to become the UN's largest peacekeeping operation with 20,000 troops and 6,000 police and civilian personnel.
But only around 9,000 troops and police are currently in place.
An estimated 200,000 people have died in Darfur from the combined effects of war, famine and diseases since 2003 and more than two million have been displaced, but the Khartoum government refutes these figures and puts the death toll at 9,000.
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