By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Sudan's U.N. envoy said on Thursday the fault for any delays in deploying peacekeepers to the country's war-ravaged Darfur region lies with the United Nations and not the Khartoum government. The new head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Alain Le Roy of France, told reporters on Wednesday he did not expect the United Nations to meet its target of getting 80 percent of the planned full deployment of 26,000 U.N.-African Union peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur by the end of the year. The delayed arrival of Thai and Nepalese units was caused by a "lack of clarity" on the part of the Sudanese authorities, he said. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters on Thursday that the deployment target would probably not be reached until March 2009. Sudan's Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem rejected the idea that Khartoum was at all responsible for delays in deploying the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping mission (UNAMID). He said his government was doing everything in its power to ensure that the U.N. target was met. Le Roy said he expected that only half of the 26,000 UNAMID peacekeepers would be on the ground in Darfur by the end of the year. "If there are delays, it's because of the United Nations," Abdalhaleem told Reuters, adding that he hoped Le Roy would create better ties with the Sudanese government than his predecessor. Abdalhaleem said Le Roy's predecessor, Jean-Marie Guehenno of France, was "confrontational" and "did not seek the cooperation of the government of Sudan." U.N. officials acknowledge that obstacles created by Khartoum are not the only reason for the deployment delays. Other reasons include the logistics of deployment, the vast length of supply lines for an area roughly the size of France, and increased banditry and worsening security. But they disputed Abdalhaleem's statement that Khartoum was doing everything in its power to get the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed. Washington has also accused the United Nations of going too slowly with the deployment. WAR CRIMES Separately, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert spoke again about the possibility of the U.N. Security Council freezing an International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur. Ripert had told reporters that Paris might be open to the idea of the council using its power to freeze any ICC action against Bashir provided specific conditions were met, including an end to the killings in Darfur and action on bringing suspected war criminals to justice. He said no country had formally circulated any such proposals and that if the council was to vote now on whether to suspend the ICC investigation of Bashir, Paris would veto it. In July chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the court's judges to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir. Moreno-Ocampo accused the Sudanese leader of launching a campaign of genocide in 2003 that has killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through starvation and disease and forced 2.5 million from their homes. The African Union, Arab League and other alliances have urged the Security Council to block any moves to indict Bashir to avoid shattering the fragile peace process in Darfur. (Editing by Jackie Frank)
A Thai policeman stands among human rights activists protesting outside the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok September 18, 2008. About two dozen human rights activists and Myanmar nationals living in Thailand chanted ...
