Sudan’s stance on U.N. force is altered

UNITED NATIONS — Sudan raised new doubts Wednesday about its commitment to a U.N. peace effort in the Darfur region when its envoy ruled out any U.N. peacekeeping troops.

The surprise statement came just minutes after the Security Council announced that it welcomed the Sudanese president’s acceptance of the plan to help end the escalating conflict -- a plan that includes deployment of a hybrid African Union-United Nations force.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan had told Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, in a letter this month that every effort would be made to find African troops for the force but that if that proved impossible, the U.N. would use “a broader pool of troop contributing countries.”

But Ambassador Abdal Mahmoud Abdal Haleem told reporters Wednesday that the hybrid force must have no U.N. peacekeepers, only U.N. technical and logistical experts supporting African troops.

Bashir had said in a letter to Annan released Tuesday that Sudan was ready “to start immediately” to implement two recent agreements that endorsed the three-step U.N. plan to beef up the beleaguered 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur.

The U.N. is seeking its own force because African Union peacekeepers have been unable to quell nearly four years of fighting, which has killed more than 200,000 people.