Sweden and Norway have dropped plans to send about 400 troops to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur because of opposition from Sudan’s government, a Swedish Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday. The two Scandinavian countries had planned to send a joint engineering unit to the peacekeeping force in the troubled region. But ministry spokeswoman Sara Malmgren said the plans were canceled because Sudan opposed on-African troops in the force. The United Nations mission is the latest international attempt to quell fighting in the western Sudanese region, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million were chased from their homes since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan has been accused of obstructing the deployment of the new U.N. force. It has not accepted a Status of Forces Agreement, the legal framework under which peacekeepers can operate. CNN
