UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (UPI) -- Attacks on United Nations personnel Monday, a dire lack of humanitarian assistance and a seeming reversal by the Sudanese government on allowing U.N. peacekeeping troops to deploy in Darfur have cast a shadow over this weekend's historic peace agreement.
Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland was visiting Kalma camp near Nyala in South Darfur when a crowd attacked his translator. Egeland and the media and staff traveling with him, including the translator, fled the camp. After his departure, camp residents rioted at the U.N. peacekeeping mission's compound, killing one person who worked for both the U.N. mission and the African Union, a spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs said.
"It is totally unacceptable what happened," Egeland said in a statement. "The (members of the) African Union are our friends, and we need them in this critical moment. We need the population to support and not attack them."
Early media reports from the region indicate the crowd rioted when the translator misinterpreted a comment and suspected he might be a government spy, but OCHA could not immediately confirm the reports.
Egeland, who heads up OCHA, had been visiting the camp to highlight the need for food and other humanitarian assistance. The World Food Program cut daily rations in Darfur's internally displaced persons camps by half, beginning this month, to make its stockpiles last through September.
After months of negotiations, the government of Sudan and the main rebel groups in Darfur signed a peace agreement in Abuja, Nigeria, over the weekend. Observers hope the deal will end the two-and-a-half years of violence which the Bush administration has called genocide.
An estimated 350,000 people have died and over two million Sudanese have fled their homes in Darfur, a region the size of France in the western part of the country. Hundreds of women have also reportedly been raped by the Janjaweed militia, a government proxy force known for violently attacking villagers and burning their homes.
Sudanese officials indicated last week the agreement would ease the path toward a U.N. takeover of the 7,000-member African Union force, which has been deployed in the region since mid-2004, but the transition seemed uncertain Monday.
"Over the weekend it appeared that the government of Sudan had accepted the U.N. mission," said John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "I understand today there's been a somewhat different signal."
The country has previously refused to allow a U.N. planning team to conduct needs assessments in the region, but the world body said Monday it anticipated full access to the area in light of the peace deal.
"We will expect them to allow our peacekeeping assessment team unfettered access to Darfur," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "In the meantime, it is crucial that those countries that have the capability, whether it's in assets or financial, to also support the work of the African Union force which is currently in Darfur and as we know under-manned and under-funded."
The timeline for either a troop takeover or its prerequisite assessment mission is still unclear.
Bolton said the speed of the assessment mission will affect the peacekeeping deployment date.
"We've said previously that before the Abuja agreement was signed, we needed to get... military planners into the Sudan, into the Darfur region," Bolton said. "Until you get that planning done, you can't speed that date up."
British Ambassador Emyr Jones Perry told reporters outside the Security Council that any takeover "realistically won't be till the end of this year."
U.S. President George W. Bush said in Washington that he had spoken with the Sudanese president and urged him to accept a U.N. force. He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will ask for rapid deployment during her visit to the Security Council Tuesday.
Bush said he directed USAID to send five ships' worth of emergency food aid to the region immediately and ordered the purchase of an additional 40,000 metric tons of emergency food aid.
The president also highlighted the $225 million in emergency food aid he requested from Congress in February as part of the White House's annual budget supplemental.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced a personal donation to help bridge the aid gap in Darfur. Annan received the $500,000 Zayed Prize for his work on environmental issues and will donate the sum to relief efforts.
He had previously announced he would use the money to start a foundation for girls' education following his departure from the United Nations, but had come under criticism for accepting such a large sum in light of his reform package, which requires U.N. staff to report prizes over $250. The secretary-general, who is technically not a staff member, is exempt from the requirement.
The controversy was revived last week, when questions were raised about the appointment of Achim Steiner as head of the U.N. Environmental Program. Steiner, who sat on the jury which awarded Annan the prize in February, was nominated by Annan to the post in mid-March.
Dujarric said the diversion of prize money to Darfur was unrelated to the criticism.
"Given the massive shortfall in contributions to the Darfur relief effort, he now feels the money is more urgently needed there," he said.
