UNITED NATIONS — An arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide in Darfur could trigger “an uncontrolled reaction” against U.N. peacekeepers, a senior U.N. official warned Wednesday.
Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet told the U.N. Security Council the request by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for an arrest warrant against al-Bashir “could have serious security and other implications” for U.N. peacekeepers.
The United Nations has a 9,200-strong peacekeeping force deployed in semiautonomous southern Sudan to enforce a 2005 agreement, and it has a joint U.N.-African Union force in Darfur now totaling about 11,500 troops.
Mulet said the request for al-Bashir’s arrest could also “potentially derail” the 2005 agreement that ended 21 years of civil war between Sudan’s Muslim government in the north and the Christian and animist rebels in the south that left an estimated 2 million people dead.
