Time to Act

As Napoleon Bonaparte (not one of my favorites) said,

"Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in."

Would that the UN would take the advice.

Reuters: UN contemplates military operation for Darfur---

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A joint military team will visit Darfur next week to study whether the United Nations should take over efforts to bring order to Sudan's lawless west, U.N. officials and diplomats said on Sunday.

Led by the African Union, the mission, from December 10 to December 20, will include experts from the United States, the European Union as well as the United Nations.

Under discussion is folding the African Union's existing Darfur peacekeeping operation into a U.N. Sudan mission established last March to support a peace agreement between Khartoum and former rebels in the south of Sudan that ended two decades of war.

But it might take until September to deploy such an expanded mission, and it is uncertain whether the African Union would agree to wind up or combine its own operation into a U.N.-led force, the envoys said.

Sudan also would have to consent to non-African troops, which could number up to 10,000 and, like the African Union, would have to scramble to get enough soldiers for what one envoy called "a robust and mobile" force.

"For now there has to be further support for the African Union," one Security Council diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "In the longer term, there is going to be a need for a sustained peacekeeping force. So the African Union and the United Nations have to begin now to look at what is feasible in 2006."

About 6,000 African Union troops and police are trying to stop escalating violence in Darfur, but those in charge say they lack the vehicles and communications equipment needed to operate effectively in the desert region the size of France.