ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, April 3 (UPI) -- Darfur needs to step up its peacekeeping efforts immediately with help from the United Nations, the African Union said Tuesday.
The union's leader, Alpha Oumar Konare, called on the Sudanese government to hasten plans to beef up international peacekeeping operations in the region, even though it has refused proposals to supplement AU forces with U.N. peacekeepers.
On Sunday five Senegalese members of the AU force were killed in the country, the biggest loss of soldiers' lives in a single day. Union forces have been in Sudan's western Darfur region since 2004, and there are currently about 7,000 stationed in the area.
"If this trend continues, the peacekeeping operation in Darfur will be in serious jeopardy," Konare stated, adding that "it has become imperative and unavoidable, in the present circumstances, to speedily implement the three-phase approach to the peacekeeping operation in Darfur."
