UN renews Sudan mission; condemns Darfur violence

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 (Reuters) The UN Security Council today extended the UN mission in southern Sudan for six months, lamented the lack of a chief UN envoy and called for an end to atrocities in the Darfur region.

But the United States, which drafted the resolution, was forced to water down the text on Darfur and delete calls for a large UN force in the western Sudanese region.

Instead council members insisted the resolution focus mainly on the 10,000 strong UN peacekeeping force in southern Sudan, where troops are helping to enforce a 2005 peace pact after decades of an intermittent civil war between the Arab-dominated north and the Christian and animist south.

''What is important was not in any way to send a signal that we were undermining our continued support for an agreement, which was crucial after all to ending a 35-year civil war,'' said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, the current council president.

Still, the text expresses ''grave concern'' over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur, condemns attacks on civilians and calls on all parties to ''put an end to the violence and atrocities in Darfur'' where at least 200,000 people have died and 2.3 million are homeless.

The resolution also asks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint ''urgently'' a new special representative for the UN Mission in Sudan, known as UNMIS, which has been without a chief of mission since Khartoum expelled Dutchman Jan Pronk last October.

It renews the mandate of UNMIS until Oct. 31, although the United States had wanted only a three-month extension, mainly to keep pressure on Sudan to approve a large ''hybrid'' United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The north-south war formally ended in January 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which incorporated former rebel group the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement into a national unity government.

But implementation of the accord in the impoverished south has been slow and at times threatens to fall apart in provisions for sharing oil revenues, demarcating the north-south border and integration of the armed forces.

Separately, the Darfur conflict, which has now spilled into neighboring Chad, broke out three years ago between ethnic African rebels and the Arab-dominated central government. Militia supporting the government have driven countless civilians from their homes.

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