UNITED NATIONS, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Both the UN
secretary-general and the top peacekeeping official on Tuesday voiced their hope
that the Sudanese government will cooperate with the world body on the
peacekeeping operation.
The Security Council held closed consultation on
Tuesday, hearing briefings from Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping
Operations Jean Marie Guehenno about the recent visit by the UN-AU assessment
team to Darfur of Sudan.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who also attended
the consultation, said he, along with African officials, would be engaging
Sudanese President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir on the matter at a meeting sponsored by
the African Union (AU) on July 1.
He told reporters that he had also appealed to
Security Council members to bring their collective and individual pressure to
bear not just on the Sudanese government to support the deployment, but also on
the rebels that are outside the agreement to sign it, and on all parties to
implement the pact in good faith.
Meanwhile, Guehenno stressed that the situation in
Darfur remains very fragile.
"There is an agreement and that's a major achievement
- but it's an agreement that opens a window, and that's a window that needs to
be seized," he told reporters.
In view of the fragility of the situation, he said
that "it would be wise" to have, by January 2007, a substantial UN force on the
ground, perhaps consisting of some three brigades of three to five battalions
each.
However, Guehenno admitted that the big question
still remains whether the Sudanese government which has so far balked at the
deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission will agree to it.
The joint assessment team, which was led by Guehenno,
completed the first stage of its visit in Sudan on June 13. The purpose of the
team's visit to Sudan is to assess how to strengthen the AU peacekeeping forces
in Darfur in the next few months and examine the requirements for a possible
transition of the peacekeeping mission from the AU to the United Nations.
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