African Union

African Union truce monitors suspended operations in South Darfur state after one of their helicopters came under fire. A senior African Union official, who asked not to be named, did not say how long the suspension would last. South Darfur state makes up about one-third of the Darfur region. The African Union has more than 800 troops in Darfur, trying to monitor cease-fire violations in a region about the size of France.

SOUTH AFRICA * In a blur of streaking fighter jets, and with Zulu dancers and parachuting soldiers, African leaders launched the 53-member African Union, an ambitious body that seeks to pull their beleaguered continent out of poverty and conflict. "Africans have a common and a shared destiny.

An African Union delegation was in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, to discuss the deployment of international peacekeepers as government troops expanded a house-to-house search for weapons in one of the world's most dangerous and heavily armed cities. Troops loyal to the interim government, aided by Ethiopia, last month routed an alliance of Islamic religious leaders that had controlled much of southern Somalia since summer.

One African Union soldier was killed and another was critically wounded when heavily armed men ambushed a patrol near their base in Sudan's Darfur region, the United Nations said. The AU said it was "dismayed and outraged" and was investigating. "We are still looking at the final report on the group that attacked our patrol," said Said Djinnit, the AU peace and security commissioner.

The U.N. Security Council approved another year of peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region despite sharp divisions among member nations over genocide charges filed against Sudan's president. The United States supports the peacekeeping mission but abstained from the council's 14-0 vote. It objects to language in the resolution that notes that the African Union wants the council to freeze the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. U.S. spokesman Richard Grenell said that the language sent the wrong signal to a man who the U.S. believes presided over genocide.

THE DISPATCH OF AFRICAN peacekeepers to end government-sanctioned mass murders in Sudan last year won deserved praise. Nations that often complained about interference in their affairs by former colonial powers were stepping forward to solve one of the continent's own problems. But when the battlefield is the Sudanese territory of Darfur, nothing is ever easy. In recent weeks, rebel fighters have stripped and beaten aid workers and kidnapped more than a dozen African Union monitors.

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution Saturday establishing an international inquiry to determine whether systematic attacks on black villagers in Sudan constitute genocide. The measure also calls for increasing the number of African Union troops in Sudan to monitor the government's efforts to halt militia violence, and threatens to consider oil sanctions if Khartoum does not cooperate.

Libyan rebels delivered an emphatic "no" to an African Union proposal for an end to fighting in their country, insisting that Moammar Kadafi must step down from power as part of any diplomatic solution. The opposition council's announcement after closed-door talks with an African Union delegation in Benghazi quashed hopes for an early end to the nearly 2-month-old conflict between Kadafi's forces and opposition fighters based in eastern Libya. South African President Jacob Zuma said late Sunday after meeting with Kadafi in Tripoli, the capital, that the Libyan leader had endorsed the African Union's road map for peace.

The Sudanese government has a bizarre understanding of what peace means. Hours after leaders signed a cease-fire agreement with rebels in the western territory of Darfur, government troops stormed refugee camps there, beat inhabitants and forced them to move. The death toll in Darfur is now estimated at 50,000 and will keep rising without stronger action from the international community. The U.N. Security Council meets in Nairobi this week, with Sudan a major topic.

ON TUESDAY, the Sudanese government seemed to give advocates pushing for an end to the ongoing genocide in Darfur everything they have asked for, but nobody was celebrating. That's because activists and ambassadors are all too familiar with Khartoum's disgraceful modus operandi. The United Nations has been struggling for nearly a year to persuade President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir to allow a hybrid U.N.