Cape Town — South Africa has urged Russia, China, the United States and European Union countries to provide the heavy military equipment necessary to deploy Darfur's new hybrid peacekeeping force.
"We can't continue to say there's a major crisis in Darfur and then we are slow in making the commitment [to provide] equipment," the country's deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, told a news briefing in Cape Town.
He said the United Nations was discussing a budget of U.S. $1.4 billion for joint UN-African Union force for the year ending June 2008.
"That's a huge undertaking and the type of equipment that they need has to come from the bigger military powers, clearly… The key challenge is that the developed countries must move decisively to provide the equipment that is needed."
Pahad said the UN had asked South Africa to provide helicopters and ground transport as well as a battalion of troops, and the Cabinet would discuss the request soon.
"If we can provide equipment, we should provide equipment," he said. "We [too] cannot keep saying this is such an important problem… then if we can contribute we don't contribute…. But the reality is we are not such a major military power who has all the major equipment that is needed for such a force… "
Pahad also urged the Sudanese government, the AU and the EU to resolve outstanding issues over the composition of the force.
He also said there were concerns about "bureaucratic problems" in getting heavy equipment into Darfur but questioned the need to focus on this when the equipment had not yet been sourced.
"If you don't have the commitment yet why are you worrying about the bureaucratic problems… about getting it in? Get the equipment and then we'll all put pressure to ensure that if there are any bureaucratic problems we can overcome [them]."
The hybrid UN-AU force is scheduled to be 20,000-strong when it is fully deployed. South African President Thabo Mbeki said recently that more troops had been offered than were needed. However, a top UN peacekeeping official, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, warned last week that the mission could fail if ground transport and aviation units were not forthcoming, and if Sudan failed to approve the presence of non-African units in the force.
