UN Votes for Sudan Peacekeepers

25/03/2005| IslamWeb

The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to authorise a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force for southern Sudan but it remains deadlocked on any action for Darfur in the west.

The peacekeepers are to monitor a crucial agreement signed in January between the Khartoum government and southern rebels that ended a 21-year old civil war. That conflict cost two million lives and forced four million people from their homes.

The council's resolution on Thursday, drafted by the United States, calls for up to 10,000 military personnel and a civilian component of up to 715 police.

UN officials say such a force will take several months to get on the ground.

In their accord, Khartoum and the Southern Peoples Liberation Movement agreed on political power-sharing arrangements and a division of country's oil wealth.

They also called for integrated security forces in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and in Khartoum.

In six years, southerners, mainly animists and Christians, would be entitled to a referendum to determine whether they wanted to form their own state and break from the north. 

 

PHOTO CAPTION

Sudanese children peak though the hay walls of their classroom at their school in the Internally Displaced Persons camp of Sisi. (AFP)