Irish Times: US wants broad powers for any UN peacekeepers in Ukraine

Published Sept. 14, 2017 at 7:28 pm

Peacekeeper troops from Ethiopia and deployed in the United Nations (UN) Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) patrol at night in Abyei town, Abyei state, on December 14, 2016.The Abyei Administrative Area is a disputed territory between Sudan and South Sudan with a longstanding intercommunal tensions between the Ngok-Dinka ethnic majority and the pastoral Misseriya population, who migrate through the area seasonally from the north. An attack by Government of Sudan forces on Abyei in May 2011 displaced the majority of the Ngok Dinka population, approximately 105,000 people to areas south of the River Kiir, which became overcrowded and are suffering a huge competition over natural resources. / AFP PHOTO / Albert Gonzalez Farran

Photo by AFP

The United States has said it would back the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine, as long as they had a broad mandate and access to the Russian border, through which weapons and fighters flow to separatist militia.

Having opposed earlier Ukrainian requests for peacekeepers, Russia distributed a UN draft resolution this month for a mission that would be restricted to the “contact line” separating government and separatist forces and would only be tasked with protecting international monitors operating in the conflict zone.