UN to offer plan for 'hybrid' African Union-UN force

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan intends to propose a "hybrid" African Union-UN force for Darfur in talks with Sudanese officials and has invited major powers to take part, the United Nations said yesterday.

Sudan has been adamantly opposed to a UN force, authorized by the Security Council, so the United Nations is considering alternatives to get a larger and better-funded peacekeeping operation acceptable to Khartoum.

The African Union is holding a series of meetings in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa this week on its under-financed 7,000-member force in Darfur that has been unable to stop the violence, which has thrown some 2.5 million people out of their homes over the past three years.

Annan has proposed a three-step enhancement of the African Union. The third, to be discussed in Addis Ababa Thursday, would be an AU-UN joint operation that would be financed by the United Nations and be controlled by both organizations, according to a position paper he has prepared.

In Dakar, Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade said Sudan was "not saying no to the United Nations but he's limiting the intervention of the United Nations."

Wade said he had received a letter from Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir proposing solutions on Darfur.

But Wade did not say whether Bashir, who has approved some UN beefing up of the African Union force, would accept a larger foreign military presence, such as a hybrid AU-UN operation.

Since the Security Council has to approve any new arrangement, Annan asked the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China, the permanent council members, to send high-level envoys to join him in Addis Ababa, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Senior officials from Egypt, Gabon, Egypt, the Arab League and the European Union are also expected to attend, the spokesman added.

Annan issued the invitations as the UN Security Council Friday canceled plans to send an eight-member British-led delegation to another meeting on the Darfur crisis yesterday in Addis Ababa, unable to agree what the delegation could discuss and how their visit would mesh with Annan's trip.

Violence in Darfur has escalated for months. An African Union official reported that up to 30 villagers were killed and 40 wounded Saturday when armed men riding horses and camels attacked a village in Sirba, about 28 miles north of El Geneina, capital of West Darfur state. The attackers are suspected to be janjaweed -- progovernment militia who have killed, raped and plundered non-Arab villagers.

Some 200,000 people are estimated to have been killed since rebels took up arms in early 2003.