DARFUR DEPLOYMENT: THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 USUN NEW YORK 000193 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/09/2017 TAGS: PGOV PREL SU UNSC KPKO SUBJECT: DARFUR DEPLOYMENT: THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK REF: A. (A) KHARTOUM 281 (B) USUN NEW YORK 107 ¶B. (C) KHARTOUM 00232 (D) KHARTOUM 312 (E) USUN NEW YORK 168 (F) MURRAY-WOLFF-SILVERBERG 7MARCH E-MAIL (G) STATE 24349 USUN NEW Y 00000193 001.2 OF 004 Classified By: Ambassador Alex Wolff for Reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY. Most every element of Darfur deployment is frustrated by political and physical realities: supporting infrastructure for light support package (LSP) military and civilian officials is inadequate, and AMIS has refused to integrate even the relative few who have arrived; construction of barracks for heavy support package (HSP) troops and significant deployment are impossible before the start of the rainy season in May even if Sudan President Bashir blesses the deployment, which he won't; HSP elements would be stranded if hybrid forces are not in the pipeline, and the AU avoids even talking about hybrid. Post here outlines next steps with at least a partial New York aspect none of which would amount to a major breakthrough if taken individually, but each of which show some promise of triggering positive multiplier effects. We also point out what we see as a need to better coordinate the three Darfur tracks that are in play -- the three-phase deployment, sanctions and the threat thereof, and International Criminal Court indictments. END SUMMARY. LSP: Merging With HSP ¶2. (C) The boost that the LSP was designed to provide to AMIS operations and capacity building has not materialized due to problems throughout the pipeline. A February 14 meeting of potential troop contributing countries (TCC) hosted by the UN Department of Peacekeeping operations (DPKO) revealed that of the total planned LSP military complement of 105 officers, 61 have deployed while the remaining 44 -- including the U.S. contribution of two -- have yet to be provided by member states. Until these remaining personnel are designated, DPKO has no one left to deploy under LSP. Meanwhile, DPKO reports that the 61 officers deployed in Darfur are not being utilized according to plan because AMIS Force Commander General Luke Aprezi refuses to establish the joint operations center (JOC) and the joint mission analysis center (JMAC) most of them were supposed to staff. Recent positive LSP developments -- a land use issue in El Fasher is evidently being resolved (ref A) and a lingering US-UN contractor hand-off is evidently about to be resolved after months of US-UN squabbling -- may stimulate TCC pledges, especially if complemented by the USG fulfilling our own pledge. To state the obvious, however, LSP implementation has been disappointing to date. ¶3. (C) LSP was intended to be a modest but rapid first wave in the westward expansion of UN engagement in Sudan, paid for with money -- $2 million to date -- borrowed from UNMIS in questionable compliance with internal UN rules. The reality that the rollout of this modest program has not been rapid, therefore, can represent at worst a modest setback to UN efforts in Sudan. Although the expertise to be provided by LSP remains an important component of the three-phase deployment, full LSP deployment need not precede HSP deployment. DPKO and the USG will continue to use every opportunity to pressure the AU and AMIS to fully utilize the LSP human resources being made available. As a practical matter, however, the solicitation of TCC's on LSP will merge with the larger effort to solicit HSP and hybrid elements that will take on new urgency with the funding of HSP. HSP: Crunch Time For DPKO and African Members of the Security Council ¶4. (C) After months of agonizingly slow progress, UN-AU negotiations produced a January 21 agreement on civilian, military, and police components of HSP. SYG Ban Ki-moon gave the Security Council an HSP cost estimate of $194 million on February 8. U/SYG for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno told Ambassador Sanders on February 27 that DPKO expects to submit formal funding requests to the General Assembly's 5th Committee sometime during the week beginning March 5. (NOTE. As of COB on March 9, we've heard of no such submission. END NOTE.) Funding dedicated to a concrete HSP will in turn enable DPKO to coherently approach TCC's to solicit firm commitments and timelines for troop deployment. USUN NEW Y 00000193 002.2 OF 004 ¶5. (C) Although the UN-AU agreement on HSP and the imminent funding requests provide badly needed momentum, the breakthrough brings in its wake new causes of concern about UN capacity to facilitate the Darfur deployment. DPKO provided "preliminary cost estimates" totaling $288 million as an addendum to the SYG's February 26 report on Darfur; the unexplained $94 million cost increase over Ban's estimate does not inspire confidence in DPKO's management abilities. Moreover, the halting pace of the HSP process to date virtually guarantees that contracting for HSP infrastructure will bump up against the May onset of the Darfur rainy season, a circumstance that will greatly complicate deployment. ¶6. (C) DPKO has also given hints of further layers of potential internal delay. Africa Division Director Dimitry Titov told deputy pol counselor on February 26 that several DPKO, Comptroller, and Office of Legal Advisor (OLA) officials believe that express Security Council authorization for HSP is advisable, if not required, for legal and auditing reasons, as a condition of securing 5th Committee funding. Titov said that OLA believes in particular that deployment of certain HSP elements -- including formed police units, attack helicopters, and dedicated force protection units -- require some sort of additional explicit Security Council authorization in order to ensure that UN use of these elements would not exceed its peacekeeping mandate in the event of hostilities. DPKO A/S Hedi Annabi reiterated to pol counselor more strongly on March 1 that the Secretariat was convinced that specific Council authority would be required for those deployment components. Although Guehenno confirmed to Ambassador Sanders that DPKO will not delay its committee submission in order to bring these concerns to the Council, we anticipate that HSP deployment will be further delayed if the concerns are not resolved in the meantime. Our reaction to DPKO to date has been to reiterate the Department's position that UNSCR 1706 provides ample authority for HSP as detailed in the January 21 UN-AU Khartoum agreement and that the Council will deal with any concerns about HSP raised in the committee process when and if committee members raise them. (COMMENT. We are at a loss as to why these Secretariat concerns were not raised with the Council during SIPDIS the UN's very lengthy negotiations with the AU on HSP. Further, given that AMIS' mandate is more a patchwork of public pronouncements than a formal document, we disagree that the three components necessarily amount to an expansion of the mandate. END COMMENT.) ¶7. (C) The UN-AU agreement on HSP components also brought to the surface a non-HSP issue regarding construction of camp facilities for additional AMIS troops to be deployed to provide force protection. Because the facilities are to house AMIS rather than blue-hatted troops, they cannot be constructed with assessed UN funds. The January 21 agreement lists the facilities in its Annex A as "under review with the U.S. Government." Although a cooperative USG has undertaken to provide the facilities and is expediting the involved contracting, DPKO again clearly failed to recognize and flag an emerging issue in a timely fashion. USUN is in daily contact with multiple levels of DPKO in an ongoing effort to keep HSP's tenuous position on the deployment track. The sooner we can establish a viable mechanism for preventing confusion in the future, the faster we can get UN boots on the ground. ¶8. (C) Khartoum apologists Qatar and China have given notice that no aspect of Darfur deployment would sail smoothly through the Security Council. Even a letter from the presidency inviting AU Chair Konare to meet with the Council about HSP and the hybrid force was subjected to a Qatari filibuster until broken by South Africa's intervention on March 1. The episode made clear to us that Khartoum-targeted agenda items would be subject to staunch Qatar/China resistance, especially if, as we expect, Khartoum produces another nuanced letter expressing general support for a Darfur deployment but placing particular obstacles in the path to implementation. The key for overcoming that resistance, as in the Konare letter example, will clearly be getting African Council members (South Africa, Congo, Ghana) on board from the outset. Those members, however, have shown little inclination to routinely referee Darfur-spats and we advise keeping non-essential items off the Council's calendar, saving our lobbying of African members for big ticket items (such as whether a new resolution is required to USUN NEW Y 00000193 003.2 OF 004 deploy the hybrid force). ¶9. (C) Beyond UN internal bottlenecking, more work needs to be done with AU Force Commander General Aprezi (if he cannot be removed) to ensure HSP deployment. In addition to refusing to establishment a JOC and JMAC, Aprezi held the transition of the cumbersome eight-sector AMIS command structure into an AU-UN agreed three-sector model hostage to the financing and deployment of two additional AMIS battalions (ref A). Aprezi reportedly has finally agreed to the transition, although he no-showed at a scheduled March 1 informal meeting with the Security Council. The ranking military officer on the ground in Darfur, Aprezi apparently declines to take advice from officers of lesser rank or to take orders from civilians. Identifying an appropriate interlocutor -- perhaps Nigerian President Obaasanjo -- for Aprezi is crucial, should he stay in command. Hybrid Military Realities ¶10. (C) At the February 15 SYG luncheon with Security Council PermReps, DPKO U/SYG Guehenno declared, "It is a certainty that by July 1, we will not be fully deployed or equipped to transition to a hybrid force." He could have added that delays to date in LSP and HSP deployment, construction requirements, inevitable weather delays, and predictable Khartoum-inspired delays all combine to render full HSP deployment in calendar year 2007 an ambitious goal. AMIS being the target of all LSP and HSP deployments, AMIS must be persuaded to stay in Darfur at least through the year, and trying to persuade AMIS officials means taking seriously the numerous financial and support demands AU PSC Commissioner Said Djinnit expressed in New York on March 1 (ref E). ¶11. (C) Realization of the hybrid force has also been retarded by AU Commission Chair Konare's stormy engagements with the UN. Konare's lack of cooperation comes as no surprise to DPKO's Annabi, who accuses Konare of making HSP negotiations needlessly contentious by re-opening them three times since December after deals were supposedly finalized. DPKO reports similar difficulties with Konare as the UN tries to discuss potential leadership for the hybrid operation (ref B). Konare's continual deflection of SYG invitations to come to New York motivated new Council President South Africa invite Konare to meet members informally in New York. (NOTE. Konare has reportedly agreed to visit NY in mid April. END NOTE.) PLAN B? ¶12. (C) It is clear from President Bashir's recent letter to POTUS that sanctions and other murmurings of a "Plan B" remain a credible threat to the GNU. Recent worried calls to USUN by jittery Chinese Mission diplomats also attest to this fact. Security Council members, especially the UK, are beginning to mobilize around the idea of using coercive measures against Khartoum to influence its compliance with the three-phase plan. The UK has been signaling its impatience with the current lack of progress; at a P-5 meeting on March 6, the UK stressed that London is on the verge of turning toward a "Plan B." Russia and China were strongly opposed (ref F) during a March 8 meeting of the Sudan Sanctions Committee. USUN supported UK calls for sanctions per ref G. We need to evaluate whether to try to leverage Bashir's stall tactics on the hybrid force and initiatives such as Tripoli agreements that have little real potential to solve the region's problems. We also need to establish a timeline for P-3 movement in the sanctions committee. (NOTE. Department of Political Affairs A/SYG Kalomoh attended the February 15-16 Cannes Summit and reported to USUN that he had no illusions that the "deal" struck there between the Presidents of Sudan, Chad and CAR on normalizing relations would hold. END NOTE.) ¶13. (C) In calculating potential reactions from Khartoum to sanctions, threats of sanctions, and International Criminal Court indictments, we suggest that Department carefully consider the potential interaction between these efforts and the security situation on the ground as well as the simultaneous effort to solicit TCC's. Care needs to be taken to ensure that all tracks are moving in a coordinated manner USUN NEW Y 00000193 004.2 OF 004 and not independent of one another. Ref D makes clear that sanctions and indictments have real security implications that could lead even to the withdrawal of foreign officials and military personnel already deployed. These developments would also likely chill if not altogether halt HSP and hybrid deployment in their tracks. The set-up of a Bashir compliance "test" regarding HSP deployment is intended as one point of interface between the sanctions and HSP deployment tracks. We would encourage development of others. WOLFF