UN passes Darfur Peacekeeping Resolution

United Nations, May 17 : The UN Security Council has adopted a resolution calling for the deployment of a joint UN-Africa Union team in Darfur to pave the way for a UN peacekeeping force, which would take over from the AU mission (AMIS) now present in the strife-torn region.

Immediately welcoming the resolution's adoption yesterday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the United Nations ''hopes to dispatch, as quickly as possible, a joint UN/AU Technical Assessment Team to Darfur, and towards that end, is in continuous consultation with the government of ''National Unity'' of Sudan.

Mr Annan also hailed the AU Peace and Security Commission's decision to take ''concrete steps'' to bring about the transition from AMIS to a UN peacekeeping operation. ''The United Nations is continously preparing for that operation so that it can begin as early as possible,'' the spokesman said.

Mr Annan pledged full support to AMIS, including mobilisation of the international community to strengthen the AU Mission in the interim period before a UN opertion.

The resolution called on all parties to the Darfur Peace Agreement signed earlier this month by the Sudanese government and the largest rebel force in the region to ''work with the African Union, the United Nations, regional and international organisations and member states to accelerate the transition to a United Nation's operation.'' The resolution also called on those rebel groups, that have not yet signed the Agreement. Adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for enforcement measures, the resolution expressed the Council's intention to consider a travel ban and assets freeze against any individual or group that violates or blocks implementation of the agreement, which aims to end fighting in a region that has seen the deaths of scores of people and the displacement of two million others.

Under the resolution, Mr Annan would submit recommendations to the Council next week of the assessment team's return on all relevant issues, including force requirements and cost estimates, for UN operation.

Meanwhile, Mr Annan's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, returned to Khartoum from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where he took part in the AU's Peace and Security Council meeting on Sudan, telling the participants that while the Darfur Peace Agreement was a major achievement, its implementation and improving the situation on the ground level may not prove easy.

Mr Pronk will leave for Darfur tomorrow to widen the circle of support for the pact, according to the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS), deployed to monitor a peace agreement that ended over two decades of fighting in the south.

UNI