Senegal may quit AU Darfur force if it left weak
By Diadie Ba
DAKAR, April 12 (Reuters) - Senegal honoured on Thursday five of its soldiers killed in Sudan's Darfur and said it could withdraw from the African Union peacekeeping force there unless it was better equipped and protected.
The West African country, whose peacekeeping troops are widely respected, made the warning at a time when AU and U.N. negotiators are trying to persuade Sudan to accept strong U.N. assistance for the overstretched African mission in Darfur.
Senegal has 538 soldiers in the 7,000-strong AU contingent in Darfur, a western Sudanese region the size of France where more than 200,000 people have been killed in political and ethnic conflict since 2003.
The Senegalese statement followed a similar warning last month by another contributor to the Darfur force, Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame demanded more resources for it.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government has refused to accept U.N. peacekeepers for Darfur and is haggling over the details of U.N. financial and logistical support for the AU contingent.
As Senegal received with military honours the bodies of its five peacekeepers killed by an April 1 rebel ambush in Darfur, its government demanded the AU and Sudan "put our soldiers in the best conditions to be able to carry out their mission and defend themselves".
"The cabinet considers that in the current situation, if the African Union does not have the means to properly ensure the security of the contingents deployed, the government of Senegal could consider withdrawing its contingent from the AU mission in Sudan," the official statement said.
AU officials have said the Darfur mission needs increased U.N. logistical assistance and more sophisticated defensive weapons.
The April 1 ambush on the Senegalese was the deadliest single assault on the African force since it was deployed in 2004. A Rwandan soldier was also killed in an April 10 attack.
"NATION IN MOURNING"
At a military camp in downtown Dakar, relatives of the five slain soldiers wept before their coffins, which were laid in a row draped with the green, yellow and red national flag. The dead soldiers were awarded posthumous decorations.
"The entire Senegalese nation is in mourning," Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said.
He reiterated Senegal's willingness to participate in peacekeeping operations on the African continent. The world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force, 17,000-strong and deployed in Democratic Republic of Congo, includes Senegalese troops.
Senegal's warning over the Darfur force appeared aimed as much at the AU and the international community as at the government of Sudan, which has been resisting the proposed creation of a hybrid AU-U.N. force for Darfur.
"(Senegal) regrets the delay in the deployment of the hybrid operation which the Sudanese government had in fact approved before subsequently questioning it," the Senegalese government statement said.
The Senegalese and Rwandan complaints about the Darfur AU mission raise questions about an even bigger, 8,000-strong AU force proposed for Somalia, where a Ugandan peacekeeper was killed in Mogadishu at the end of last month.
