U.S. presses Sudan, experts query peacekeeper plan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council may need to meet within weeks to consider new sanctions against Sudan unless Khartoum quickly accepts a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, a top U.S. diplomat said on Monday.

But some experts at a conference on Darfur said the peacekeeping force could be a waste of money or even an "occupation" force, and they urged more effort to address extreme poverty as the cause of the Darfur crisis.

The Security Council decided unanimously in July to send peacekeepers to stem the violence in Darfur, a vast western province of Sudan where some 200,000 people have died in 4-1/2 years of fighting.

But now Sudan was throwing up obstacles and failing to meet its commitments, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said.

"The Security Council's credibility is on the line," he told the conference at New York's Columbia University.

"If there's no cooperation, the Security Council will need to reconvene to discuss the issue of what to do to bring about compliance," he said, criticizing Sudan for "foot-dragging."

Khalilzad said the world should be "unrelenting" in pressing Sudan, which has agreed in principle to the force of 26,000 troops.

"If the Sudanese government fails to meet its obligations, (the Security Council) should be willing to respond by increasing pressure and consider imposing sanctions," he said.

Asked after his speech when he thought the 15-member council, which includes Sudan's close ally China, should reconvene to take such action, Khalilzad said "within weeks."

He said that meant before the end of the year, when the UN-AU force is due to take over command from an existing AU force that has been hampered by lack of funds and equipment.

TRADING BLAME

U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said last week problems raised by Sudan include objections to some non-African units, failure to provide land, curbs on helicopter flights and a quest for a highly restrictive status of forces pact.

Sudan blamed the United Nations for delays in deploying the force. Khartoum's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, told Reuters on Monday he had not seen Khalilzad's remarks but if they were as reported, "he is missing the whole story. The language of threats will never work with Sudan."

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia's Earth Institute dedicated to achieving sustainable development, said the focus on peacekeepers was misplaced because the crisis was fundamentally a development problem, not a political one.

He said the crisis stemmed from the desperation of poor people in a huge, arid, underdeveloped region.

"You could put the peacekeepers in there, they won't change one iota on the ground in terms of the grim realities of the harshness of life in Darfur," Sachs said, pointing to the need for clinics, schools, electricity and water holes.

"I'm not against the peacekeepers, I just find them a waste of money," he said. "Unless the rich world is going to promise $2.6 billion for the peacekeepers each year, plus $2.6 billion for development, I'd say keep your peacekeepers."

Several countries have raised concerns over the cost of the force, which is much higher than any other U.N. peacekeeping mission. A U.N. official said the annual budget was around $1.5 billion, with about $1 billion more in one-off start-up costs.

Professor Mahmood Mamdani, an expert on post-colonial Africa at Columbia, said the peacekeepers could do little without a peace to keep, yet U.N.-backed talks launched in Libya in October had achieved little.

"If the political process is going to come later, what are these troops going to do in Darfur?" he said. "This is going to turn into an occupation force ... another disaster."

(Additional reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by John O'Callaghan)