UN chief urges Sudan, rebels to agree on truce

United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the Sudanese government and all rebel groups to agree to a cease-fire in Darfur, saying deteriorating security is undermining efforts to help thousands of civilians caught in an upsurge in fighting.

In his monthly report to the Security Council on Wednesday, Ban singled out attacks in West Darfur, which borders Chad, heightened tensions in camps for the displaced across Darfur, and continued banditry and vehicle hijackings, including 23 fully loaded UN World Food Programme trucks between January 1 and January 24.

The secretary-general painted a grim picture of a worsening conflict seven weeks after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur from a beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force, and a year after the UN and AU launched a new effort to get a political settlement.

Sudan government has been accused of unleashing the janjaweed militia to commit atrocities against Darfur's ethnic African communities in the fight with rebel groups. At least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million displaced since the fighting began five years ago.

The AU-UN force is authorised to have 26,000 troops and police, but Ban said only about 7,500 military personnel and 1,500 police officers were in Darfur on January 31.

At Sudan's insistence, the UN Security Council agreed the force would be predominantly African. But the Sudanese government has refused to approve non-African units from Thailand, Nepal and Nordic countries, which withdrew their offer.

Ban said he discussed "the critical issue of the composition of the force" with Sudan's President Omar Al Bashir on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 31 and "the President's response was not definitive".

He said the speed of the AU-UN force's deployment "depends critically on this issue being resolved as soon as possible".

Another critical issue for the hybrid force is the lack of offers of desperately needed helicopters, which Ban said are "indispensible" for the peacekeeping mission. Ethiopia offered four attack helicopters, but two more are needed along with 18 transport helicopters, he said. The secretary-general cited other challenges, including the lack of pledges for a heavy ground transport unit and no final allocation of land for bases in Nyala and Al Geneina.