Military analyst in Pretoria: "When a situation reaches an end-state, as it has in Darfur, the UN can take over"

Sep 11 2006 Africa's Mail & Guardian (hat tip POTP). Excerpt:

"The major contributors - South Africa, Nigeria and Rwanda - have had enough," said Henri Boshoff, military analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria.

"They've been saying for some time that they do not have the funds to sustain their operation, and that their troops are stretched too thinly to do the job.

"In the past two months we have seen two cases of South African troops being disarmed by rebels. It just cannot go on like this. So, failing some last minute injection of funds, it looks like the African Mission in Sudan is over." [edit]

Sudanese Deputy Foreign Minister Mutris SaddigAli, who was in South Africa last week, told the Mail & Guardian that his government has alternative plans for keeping order in Darfur.

"There are practical and legal reasons for not accepting UN peacekeepers," he said.

"The peace treaty between the north and the south of Sudan called for the UN to police the process. However, the Darfur peace treaty specifically calls for the AU to do the job. The AU does not have the right to hand its mandate in Darfur to the UN."

Boshoff says this assertion is inaccurate: "The AU can do this. We have seen this before in Burundi. The AU has been acting as an interim measure in the case of no ceasefire. When a situation reaches an end-state, as it has in Darfur, the UN can take over."

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