By Evelyn Leopold
02/01/2006

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Below is an excerpt of an article from Reuters:

The United States and Britain have decided to get the ball rolling on sending U.N. peacekeepers to Sudan's violent Darfur region as pressure mounts from advocacy groups demanding action.

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The United States and Britain want the 15-member Security Council to issue a statement next week calling for contingency plans from the United Nations for peacekeepers.

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The African Union, which has some 7,000 troops on the ground in an area the size of France, has not yet agreed to join or turn over its mission to the United Nations, which already has peacekeepers in southern Sudan.

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And no one knows who would join such a force, with Annan hoping Western nations, including the United States, would help with an aggressive mobile force and air power. But without an early Security Council decision on transforming the operation to a U.N. mission, planning cannot begin in earnest.

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With U.S. Ambassador John Bolton having taken over the rotating Security Council presidency for February on Wednesday, the calls for action increased.

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The New York-based Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group think tank in Brussels called for Washington to "urgently seek a transition of the African Union force in Darfur to a United Nations mission with a strong mandate to protect civilians."

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Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International, said, "Mr. Bolton, who has called for stronger enforcement of arms embargoes against Sudan, should demand the release of an unpublished United Nations study listing those countries that ship weapons to rebels and Khartoum-backed militias."

"Then the council should use this information to punish sanctions scofflaws," he wrote in Tuesday's New York Times.