Head of UN rights body plans Darfur mission in Jan

BRUSSELS, Dec 19 (Reuters) The chairman of the new United Nations human rights watchdog said today he planned to send a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur in early January.

The 47-state United Nations Human Rights Council decided last week to dispatch five ''highly qualified'' team members to war-torn Darfur along with the world body's special Sudan investigator, but no date was set.

''It should be early January, that's what we are aiming for, but we need to ensure good preparation,'' council chairman Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico told Reuters after meeting European Union officials and lawmakers in Brussels.

The council, launched in June as part of UN reform, is under pressure to show it can act effectively on Darfur where more than 200,000 have died in violence and over 2 million people have been displaced in three years of fighting.

The body had struggled to agree on the Darfur mission, with Khartoum and its backers in the council brushing aside UN reports and saying the situation had improved.

De Alba said nominating the five members of the mission was difficult because he needed to preserve the consensus found last week. He said he was receiving offers of names by various countries and would decide by the end of the year.

The mission would aim ''to identify ways and means for the council to be part of the solution, not to pass judgment''.

''It is a big challenge for the council,'' he added.

Reuters MIR GC2302