Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has told the United Nations he endorses a plan for a joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force to help quell violence and protect civilians in Darfur, according to Reuters. But in a Dec. 23 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made public on Tuesday, Bashir also said the plan should be carried out through a special panel on which Khartoum has a seat, a move diplomats said would effectively give Sudan veto power over all aspects of its implementation. Diplomats who have seen the letter, distributed to members of the 15-nation U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, said that while Bashir's message contained positive elements, it was not clear whether it represented a real step forward in putting the plan into effect. To help sort out the situation, the council is expected to invite Annan to brief it on the letter later this week, U.N. officials said. The question of whether Bashir was now standing aside and eliminating obstacles to the plan, or clinging to ambiguities in an effort to further stall its implementation, was crucial as Annan is preparing to leave office this Sunday to make way for new Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of South Korea. Bashir was replying to a letter from Annan delivered last week in which the secretary-general tried to pin down the Sudanese leader by asking him to give his formal consent for what Annan has been describing as a hybrid AU-U.N. force of at least 22,600 troops and police. Bashir has flatly opposed a purely U.N. force, calling it a move to recolonize his vast East African nation. He has made a series of contradictory statements on a hybrid force.
