KHARTOUM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Sudan has agreed to give the U.N.-African Union Darfur peacekeeping force freedom of movement and of communications, removing major barriers to deployment of the 26,000-strong force, a mission official said on Saturday. "This is a very important milestone on the way of UNAMID," the political head of the joint mission, Rodolphe Adada, said after he and Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor signed an accord outlining the mission's operating rules. The two sides spent many weeks negotiating the final draft of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), and reached a deal only after intervention by U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon. The force will try to bring peace to the western region, in which international experts estimate some 200,000 have died and 2.5 million been driven from their homes in fighting since early 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the government of neglect. Khartoum says 9,000 have died and accuses the West of exaggerating the scale of the conflict and the casualties. U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean Marie Guehenno had said conditions originally set by Sudan, including disabling the force's communications during security operations, had threatened the viability of the mission. "UNAMID shall enjoy... the right to unrestricted communication by radio ... telephone, electronic mail, fascimile or any other means," read the text of the agreement obtained by Reuters on Saturday. SHORTAGE OF EQUIPMENT Only 9,000 of the 26,000 troops and police required have so far been deployed to Darfur. Ethiopia has pledged five of some 24 attack and transport helicopters needed by the mission, but other member states have been reluctant to provide equipment. Sudan's United Nations ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, said at the signing ceremony there would be no curfew on the force in Darfur. "The document resolved all the differences," he told reporters. "UNAMID...shall enjoy full and unrestricted freedom of movement without delay throughout Darfur," the accord read. Sudan had earlier insisted on a ban on night flights by the mission. The force's predecessor, a smaller African Union force, had been subject to a curfew in Darfur's main town and its headquarters, el-Fasher. Doubts over the composition of the force remain. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has said he will not accept non-African troops. Scandinavian engineering units withdrew their pledge to the mission after Khartoum refused to accept them, and Thai and Nepalese contingents are under debate. Alor appeared to depart from this position on Saturday when he said Sudan would agree to non-African troops in UNAMID -- the largest U.N.-funded peacekeeping operation. "We have started deploying the African forces and we are committed to deploying non-African forces as we go along in consultation with UNAMID," he told reporters. "That does not exclude forces from outside the continent," he added. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a junior Sudanese government minister and an allied militia leader accused of conspiring in war crimes in Darfur. Khartoum refuses to hand them over. (Reporting by Opheera McDoom, editing by Tim Pearce)
French General Jean-Philippe Ganascia, the European Union Force Commander in Chad looks on as troops erect a tent at their base in N'Djamena February 8, 2008. A delayed European Union peacekeeping ...
