Nepal contributes around 1,000 Nepal Army personnel for the UN peacekeeping troops in Chad. [break]
The aim of the struggling UN mission is to help about a half-million refugees and to promote law and order efforts in Chad and the Central African Republic, two impoverished nations grappling with the spillover from violence in Sudan´s Darfur province.
“We are open to any credible proposal which will allow this withdrawal to take place in proper conditions,” said Chad´s UN ambassador, Ahmad Allam-mi, who was the nation´s foreign minister from 2005 to 2008.
The dispute over the future of the two and 1/2-year-old UN mission arose a month before the UN Security Council must decide whether to renew its mandate for another year.
Allam-mi called a news conference Wednesday just as the council was privately deliberating over the future of the mission it first created in 2007 as a UN civilian and police operation with an accompanying European Union force. Last year, the council approved a UN force to replace the EU troops.
Chad has been negotiating with representatives of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Allam-mi said. The UN chief´s recommendations on such matters are usually followed by the council that is the U.N.´s most powerful body.
Some 40 countries led by Togo, Ireland, France, Ghana, Nepal, Poland and Norway contributed personnel to the $690 million-a-year mission, but it still lacks about half the 5,200 military personnel authorized.
“The military component which is in the field and is causing us difficulties can be withdrawn in smooth conditions,” Allam-mi told reporters. “Given that it is understaffed, it has been unable to provide for security within the area as it should have.´´
Chad´s president Idriss Deby said last week his country does not wish to renew the mandate of a UN peacekeeping force operating in his country along the border with Sudan because it has failed to improve conditions.
The force was also responsible for training Chadian police. It was Chad that initially asked for a European Union force to come in to help with the humanitarian situation.
Allam-mi, however, said Chad hopes to retain the nearly 1,000 U.N. civilians and volunteers with the mission, which was created to assist some 240,000 Sudanese refugees who fled Darfur, 180,000 Chadians displaced by civil war and 70,000 refugees from Central African Republic.
Allam-mi said too many UN vehicles and planes are tearing apart the nation´s roads and impeding Chad´s air traffic, and the influx of foreign money to the area is causing severe inflation, a tripling of the cost of living for impoverished refugees.
French Ambassador Gerard Araud, who is president of the UN´s most powerful body this month, read aloud a statement after the council´s closed-door discussions saying its members expressed “full support” for retaining the UN mission known as MINURCAT.
Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, plans a visit to the mission later this month. After briefing the council Wednesday, he described Chad´s bid to retain U.N. civilians while replacing military personnel as unrealistic because the two operate hand-in-hand.
“This is not an option, because we cannot keep the civilians without the military to protect them,´´ said Le Roy John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, told reporters after briefing the council that it would be best to retain both the UN troops and civilians.
“We think they´re important for the safety and security of the people in the camps, the civilians in general and for the humanitarian operations,” he said. “So we´re very concerned by the prospect of withdrawal, and I made that very clear to the council.”
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