UN to send troops to Sudan
The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to authorize a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force for the south of the country. The official mission of the peacekeepers will be to monitor the agreement signed between the government and southern rebels.
The peace agreement that the force is pledged to reinforce was signed on Jan. 9 by the Islamic government in Khartoum and rebels from the Christian and animist south, ending a 21-year war that the United Nations estimates cost 1.5 million lives and forced four million people to flee their homes.
While there is no direct connection between the conflicts in the south and the west, the United States, a principal promoter of the accord, and the United Nations have expressed the hope that the January signing will serve to speed peacemaking in Darfur, where “ethnic cleansing” by government-supported Arab militias has made refugees of two million villagers and cost the lives of an estimated 300,000 people.
The vote on Thursday followed two months of delay in which the Council and member countries were subject to rising complaints that world powers had failed to respond to what the United Nations has called the world’s worst human crisis.
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