Sudan softens its stance on UN troops in Darfur

KHARTOUM, Jan 8 (Reuters) Khartoum has softened its stance on UN troops being deployed to Darfur, leaving the door open for blue-helmeted international troops to protect civilians in its vast west, a presidential advisor said today.

Khartoum has rejected UN Security Council Resolution 1706 authorising some 22,500 UN troops and police to take over the Darfur peacekeeping mission from struggling African Union forces who have failed to stem the violence that has killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

A compromise was reached on a hybrid AU-UN force, which Khartoum had also rejected.

But today Presidential Advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail said the AU commander in Darfur could decide to send non-African troops to the violent region if the continent could not provide enough soldiers needed to preserve security.

''The priority is these troops should be African troops,'' he told Reuters. ''But suppose we fail to have these troops from Africa. In that case we will be ready to accept ... non-African troops.'' When asked whether there will be UN troops on the ground in Darfur, he told Reuters: ''You are right.'' While it is still unclear whether thousands of UN troops will be allowed to deploy to Darfur to stop the rape, killing and pillage Washington calls genocide, a middle ground seems to have been found to end the diplomatic confrontation between Khartoum and the world body.

Khartoum denies genocide and blames the Western media for exaggerating the conflict.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in his first speech of the new year late yesterday, also took the most conciliatory tone towards the United Nations in months.

''We agreed with them fully on a role for the United Nations to support the African Union in Darfur,'' he said, thanking the United Nations and former U.N. chief Kofi Annan for helping Sudan.

For the first time in many months, he did not repeat his vehement rejection of U.N. troops in Darfur.

Ismail said the government had shown flexibility in allowing the UN support to the African Union to wear their symbolic blue helmets rather than the green of the AU.

And he added both the United Nations and Khartoum had given concessions to meet each other half way.

''Resolution 1706 talked about transforming the African Union into an international force. We believe the Security Council moved from that position to accept mainly AU troops and we accepted an advisory group from the United Nations,'' he said.

For months Bashir's officials attacked the United Nations in the media, inciting demonstrations against the world body, calling it a neo-colonial Western force. Bashir said he would rather be the leader of the resistance in Darfur than the president of a nation with UN troops in the west.

Observers say Bashir feared UN troops would arrest any officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur.

But if the presidency has accepted the idea of UN forces in Darfur, it may be difficult convincing Sudanese people to accept them.

Even as Ismail spoke hundreds of angry young Sudanese demonstrated in Khartoum against the United Nations, chanting ''down, down UN'' Some Sudanese Islamic leaders have sworn to take up arms against any UN troops they see as invading Darfur's Muslim lands.

Reuters BDP GC2127