20110624
Reuters
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it submitted a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council that would authorize the deployment of 4,200 Ethiopian troops to Sudan's disputed Abyei region.



U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice also said that Washington was "gravely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Southern Kordofan," a state that borders south Sudan. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the situation there is dire.

Rice said she hoped the 15-nation council could adopt the resolution that would authorize the interim U.N. blue-helmeted force for Abyei as quickly as possible. She declined to predict how long it would take, saying only that it would not happen overnight.

Council diplomats say that the Ethiopians will be separate from the 10,000 U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sudan, known as UNMIS, which Khartoum has said it wants out of the country by July 9, the day south Sudan is set to secede from the north.

UNMIS has deployed some troops in Abyei, which both the north and south hope to include in their future territories, but U.N. officials and diplomats say those troops have failed to provide adequate protection to civilians in the region.

As the south's secession approaches, unresolved conflicts in a number of parts of Sudan, which had a decades-long north-south civil war over religion, ethnicity and natural resources, threaten to mar the process.

The north poured troops and tanks into Abyei on May 21, sparking a panicked exodus of more than 100,000 people who fled fighting in a region prized for its possible oil reserves.