The African Union does not have enough money to pay the 7,000 troops monitoring a shaky truce in Darfur beyond October, the pan-African body said on Thursday, according to Reuters. AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said a donor pledging conference in July provided some $181 million for the mission. "This money will suffice only until mid-October so far," he said, adding he hoped donors would come through. Sudan has categorically rejected a U.N. takeover of the AU mission which is struggling to end the violence that has only increased since a peace agreement was signed between the government and one rebel faction in May. The AU mission costs just under $40 million a month to run, but in order to do the job properly the AU also asked for more equipment like attack helicopters. The top U.N. envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, said many people including Western nations thought the AU force could stay in Darfur until the end of the year. "That is a misconception and that's extremely risky," he told reporters in Khartoum. "If the African Union have to leave because they cannot pay their soldiers anymore and the United Nations is not being allowed to come ... then you have a void in between," he added. Pronk had previously said donors had pledged about 70 percent of the cash requested by the AU. But on Wednesday he said he had miscalculated. Despite a May peace deal, violence has worsened in Darfur with aid access at its lowest since the conflict began 3-1/2 years ago. "It is going from really bad to catastrophic in Darfur," Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters in Geneva. "It has to change as well, we cannot keep up with the situation even though we have the biggest humanitarian operation on earth going in Darfur." He said nine humanitarian workers had been killed in Darfur in the last month and there had been a more than 100 percent increase in violent attacks and clashes there in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2005. Tensions have risen because of popular and armed opposition to the AU-brokered May accord.
