By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, July 6, updated -- With the countdown to South Sudan's formal declaration of independence on July 9 begun, at the UN in New York on Wednesday negotiations on the resolution for a new peacekeeping mission went into overtime.
A Deputy Permanent Representative emerged from the Security Council chamber and told Inner City Press that while the size of the mission will be reconsidered after three or six months, a sticking point is whether and how the disputed borders in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states will be monitored.
“If the North does not agree,” the DPR told Inner City Press, “there can't be any UN peacekeepers there.”
Khartoum has agreed to Ethiopian troops in Abyei, but has stepped away from a deal about South Kordofan. When Inner City Press asked the UN earlier on Wednesday to confirm troops build ups in South Kordofan, the response was a reiteration of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for freedom of movement. Does that mean the UN doesn't have freedom of movement? Yes, was the answer. Video here, from Minute 47:30.
Questions posed to the UN in New York on July 5 were then e-mailed to UNMIS in Sudan, but have yet to be answered. A delegation from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations came out of the Security Council at 5 pm on Wednesday. Referring to the number of troops proposed, Inner City Press asked, “Seven thousand?” A UN military official laughed; a civilian official said “DPKO has no comment.”
[See update below: UK says between six and seven thousand.]
On the numbers, a Permanent Representative inside the negotiations told Inner City Press that DPKO while asking for 7000 also refers to a 5400 figure. We'll have more on this.
Footnote: as the above was finished, the Obama administration announced its delegation to Juba, including Susan Rice, Colin Powell, Brooke Anderson, Rep. Donald Payne, Princeton Lyman, Donald Steinberg, Africom's Carter F. Ham, and Johnnie Carson. “Johnny Carson?” a US official asked. Not that Johnny Carson...
Update of 7:35 pm -- among Western P-5 Permanent Representative, the UK's Mark Lyall Grant emerged and told Inner City Press, somewhere between six and seven thousand. France's Gerard Araud said nothing. And Susan Rice of the US... is still inside the Council, if the presence of USUN body guards is any guide.
