UN draft on Darfur troops drops sanctions threat

United Nations, July 25: Britain and France softened a UN resolution today that would authorize up to 26,000 troops and police in Darfur by dropping a threat of ''further measures'' against Sudanese obstructing peace efforts.

But Sudan's ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, still objected to the revised UN Security Council draft.

''It's very ugly. It's worse than the first one,'' he said, prompting Andrew Natsios, the visiting U.S. special envoy for Sudan, to say that Khartoum ''should not have veto power.'' The new text, obtained by Reuters, also sets a target date of December. 31 to transfer authority from the African Union to a joint or ''hybrid'' AU-UN force that would operate in Sudan's Darfur region, although full deployment is expected to take another year.

Estimated to cost more than 2 billion dollar in the first year, the operation is an effort to quell violence in Sudan's western region where more than 2.1 million people have been driven from their homes and an estimated 200,000 have died.

But it leaves intact a tough mandate, Sudan's biggest complaint, that would allow the use of force to ensure the security of the mission's personnel and humanitarian workers and to protect civilians under threat of physical violence'' as well as to seize or collect arms.

Reuters>