Head of UN Peacekeeping shuns sending troops without gov't OK

Oct 4 2006 AP report [via Easy Bourse via CFD] excerpt:

The top U.N. peacekeeping official on Wednesday rejected the notion that the U.N. could deploy troops to Sudan's war-wracked Darfur region without a firm political agreement between rebels and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's government.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, said sending international troops to try to stop the continued violence in Darfur - which the U.S. has labeled a genocide - would go well beyond what peacekeepers are supposed to do.
"When you try to apply peacekeeping to any kind of situation and confuse peacekeeping with peace enforcement, you run very quickly into great difficulties," Guehenno said.

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Guehenno said he believed there was no military solution to the Darfur conflict, suggesting that the international community ought not look to the U.N. "blue helmets" if it wants foreign troops to be the ones who impose peace in Darfur.

He said Darfur was too big at about 200,000 square miles to be policed by a U.N. force unless the force was huge. The current African Union force is about 7,000 strong, while the U.N. force that would take over is pegged at 22,000 troops.

"Anybody who tells me that a half million square kilometers can be policed, that law and order can be imposed by an outside force ... I think is wrong," Guehenno said. "We know from experience that that is not the case."