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 Sudan Defense minister contradicts UN envoy on convoy attack (Re: Elbagir Osman)
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Sudan Defense minister contradicts UN envoy on convoy attack
Thursday 10 January 2008 15:05. Printer-Friendly version Comments...
January 10, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — A few hours after Sudan’s
UN envoy steadfastly denied that his government
attacked a UNAMID convoy, Sudan’s defense minister
on Thursday admitted his forces were responsible
for the attack, but insisted the peacekeepers
were to blame for not announcing their route.
Abdalmahmood Mohamad"The army wasn’t informed
of the convoy’s itinerary and before entering Tine
(in Darfur) soldiers fired warning shots without
knowing the vehicles were from UNAMID,"
Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein told the
independent Assahafa daily.
"Those shots were ignored and that’s when the soldiers
opened fire, wounding the driver and damaging
a troop carrier and a truck," he said.
The statements by Hussein indicate a requirement
by Sudan that all UNAMID forces notify the government
in advance of their movements. The UN rejected
the stipulation as part of the Status of Forces Agreement (SAF).
The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday slammed as
"unacceptable" Monday’s attack on the new joint U.N.-African
Union force in west Darfur in which a civilian driver
was wounded and several vehicles damaged.
"The army stopped firing when they realized it was a
UNAMID convoy," he said, placing responsibility
for the incident on the U.N. force which, according
to him, should have announced their route.
"That way we could have avoided mistaking them for
rebels, especially as this area near Chad has been
the scene of skirmishes with rebels," he said.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the U.N. peacekeeping
department, told the Security Council Wednesday
that a Sudanese area commander had confirmed that
"a Sudanese armed force unit
fired upon a clearly marked UNAMID convoy."
On Wednesday, Sudan’s U.N. envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad
had denied responsibility for Monday’s attack,
accusing instead what he said were Chad-backed
rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement.
"They were not the government. Why we would do something
like that?. I can assure you that Sudan government
forces did not do that at all. We have no relationship
whatsoever with that attack." Mohamad said.
When fully deployed, UNAMID is to become the U.N.’s
largest peacekeeping operation with 20,000 troops
and 6,000 police and civilian personnel, but only
around 9,000 troops and police are currently in place.
At least 200,000 people have died from the combined
effects of war, famine and diseases and more
than 2 million have fled their homes since
the ethnic minority rebels took up arms against
Sudan’s Arab-dominated regime in February 2003.
Some information for this report provided by AFP.
http://sudaneseonline.com/spip.php?article25525
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Elbagir Osman
Tragie Mustafa
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست