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UNITED NATIONS-Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Tuesday that he would travel to Sudan, Chad and Libya next week to press for an end to fresh violence in Darfur and for speedy deployment there of a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force.“I want to go and see for myself the very difficult circumstances under which our forces will operate,” he said in a news conference at UN headquarters. “I also want to know, firsthand, the plight of those they seek to help."He said he had expressed “deep concern” to the Sudanese authorities over reports of new attacks in the region and promised to make it part of his conversations with the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.“I am deeply concerned about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur that has caused the death of hundreds of people in the last few weeks alone,” he said. “I appeal to the government of Sudan and to all the parties to refrain from military action,” he said, and to choose “the path of peace and political dialogue.”The joint force, 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 civilian police officers, will be the world’s largest peacekeeping operation and cost more than $2 billion a year.UN officials hope to begin deployment in October and complete it by the beginning of 2008.The Security Council approved the joint force on July 31 after the government in Khartoum relented in its persistent and lengthy objections to the presence of the UN in Sudan, which Mr. Bashir had characterized as recolonization.UN officials say that they have received enough pledges from African countries for infantry soldiers, which Sudan insists on, but that they still lack commitments from wealthier nations for engineering and communications specialists and attack helicopters.At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur since rebel groups took up arms four years ago to fight for greater autonomy and government-armed Arab militias retaliated with a scorched-earth campaign.An estimated 2.5 million people have been forced from their land in Darfur, with 230,000 of them fleeing to Chad, where more than 170,000 Chadians have also been displaced, according to Mr. Ban.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
