Pekka Haavisto lands Darfur top-job

Date: 14/07/05

Finnish Pekka Haavisto will be appointed the EU's envoy for Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur next week.

Haavisto became the first Green minister in Western Europe in 1995, holding the environment and development assistance portfolios in the Finnish government.

Since February, he has been the chairman of a task force with the UN Environment Programme for Africa's Great Lakes region. He has also worked for the UN in Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority and undertaken assessments of the use of depleted uranium during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

His nomination was accepted by EU ambassadors yesterday (13 July) and will be rubber-stamped by the foreign ministers when they meet in Brussels next week (18-19 July).

The only other candidate for the post was Sweden's Sten Rylander, the EU's representative in a mediation team in the Darfur conflict, led by the African Union (AU).

Both the EU and NATO have agreed to provide airlift support to the AU's peacekeeping mission in Darfur, a region the size of France, where 180,000 people have died and two million people have been uprooted since violence between government and rebel forces erupted in 2003. Under a set of measures to be endorsed by foreign ministers, the EU would transport African forces and equipment in and out of Darfur several times each week.

Haavisto's contract will last for six months but could be renewed.

The ministers are also to appoint Slovak Jan Kubis as the first EU envoy to Central Asia.

In addition, they are expected to set in train plans to expand the four-member EU police team that has been providing advice and practical support to the civilian police in the Palestinian territories since January. One possibility being considered is transforming that ad hoc team into a fully-fledged EU mission.

After delivering four bomb-disposal vehicles to Gaza and the West Bank and providing the Palestinian Authority's force with computers, handcuffs and communications gear, the team's next tasks include supervising a change management team for the territories' police.

The team is to be involved, too, in an audit of Palestinian prisons and detention centres.

Preview of the General and External Affairs Council, Brussels, 18-19 July 2005. Ministers are expected to appoint Finnish Pekka Haavisto the EU's Special Representative for Sudan's conflict region of Darfur and Slovak Jan Kubis as the first EU envoy to Central Asia. Further decisions were to concern the EU's support to the civilian police in the Palestinian territories.

Council of the EU: Policies: Foreign Policy: EU Special Representatives http://consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.asp?id=263&lang=en&mode=g

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