Sudan says AU can't transfer mandate to UN

ADDIS ABABA, Sep 13 (Reuters) Sudan said today the African Union (AU) had no authority to transfer its troubled peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of western Sudan to the United Nations.

If the African organisation abandons the mission, the AU troops would withdraw and no one could replace them without the approval of the Sudanese government, a Sudanese junior minister told the AU's Peace and Security Council.

The AU mission expires on September 30 and the UN Security Council last month passed a resolution to deploy more than 20,000 UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur. The Sudanese government has rejected the UN resolution.

Al-Samani al-Wasiyla, minister for state for foreign affairs, said: ''All the African Union can do if its mission failed for any reason is to withdraw from Sudan and it cannot hand over its duties to any party except the government.'' ''There is no provision in the protocol establishing the African Union Peace and Security Council that allows the African Union to transfer its mandate to the United Nations'', he added.

He disputed the argument that the AU would have to give up the Darfur mission because of financial problems, saying that money was available from the Arab League.

At an Arab summit in Khartoum in March, Arab leaders promised to fund the AU operation from October onwards.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes in three years of rape, killing and pillage in Darfur, in the far west of the country.

Wasiyla said the UN resolution on Darfur was a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of his country.

''(It) gives the UN the mandate to intervene in restructuring Sudanese police and set up an independent judicial system. No government on earth would accept such a flagrant violations to its independence and sovereignty,'' he said.

REUTERS LL HS2238