News Article by AP posted on August 21, 2008 at 23:33:11: EST (-5 GMT)
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Darfur peacekeepers' chief: Sudan cooperating KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP)- The head of international peacekeepers in Darfur on Thursday downplayed Omar al-Bashir's threat to expel the force if a genocide indictment against the Sudanese president is acted upon, saying Khartoum authorities have so far been helpful. Rodolphe Adada, the peacekeepers chief, said Sudan has been working to speed up the deployment of the U.N.-African Union force, and that the government's attitude has been one of "working with us and helping us." Adada's comments came a day after al-Bashir threatened in an interview with pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV to go to war and ask Darfur peacekeepers to leave if the International Criminal Court formally seeks his arrest. Prosecutors at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, charged al-Bashir last month with genocide and war crimes, saying militias unleashed by his government have killed some 300,000 ethnic Africans since 2003. More than 2.5 million have been displaced. Adada says that al-Bashir, who visited the peacekeepers just days after the charges were announced, said "he was supportive of the mission" and promised to "help." Darfur peacekeepers have been operating at about a third of the size of authorized by the United Nations, and the mission lacks attack helicopter and other logistics. Last week, Sudanese government allowed the mission to use the three Darfur airports around the clock, according to Noureddine Mezni, a mission spokesman. At least one airport is almost ready for a 24-hour operation. The use of the airports would help speed up deployment of more peacekeepers. For now, equipment travels for almost 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from Port Sudan in eastern Sudan, to the troubled Darfur. The route is fraught with security risks and had been blamed for delays in needed equipment. Apart from upsetting the Darfur deployment, there are fears that a move to arrest al-Bashir could also threaten a fragile north-south peace deal and plunge the country into new civil war. Underlining these fears, a top U.N. envoy to Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, told the U.N. Security Council in a briefing this week that Sudan has warned of the consequences of an indictment. Qazi said Sudanese officials told him that if an arrest warrant for al-Bashir is issued, it could have "serious consequences" for the U.N. mission in Sudan.
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