By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 (Reuters) - Sudan's president wants to restrict U.N. movements in Darfur, limiting overflights or attack helicopters and barring international police from government controlled zones and other areas.
The United Nations on Monday distributed a translation of a 14-page annex to a letter from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir that arrived last Thursday. This document refuted in detail U.N. plans to bolster under-financed African Union military monitors under an interim plan, known as a "heavy package."
"The letter is very disappointing," said British U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry. "It's a major setback, and is tantamount to a requirement for a renegotiation of some of the points in the heavy package."
Bashir was responding to a Jan. 24 letter from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, which spelled out plans for an interim package of some U.N. 3,000 personnel, mainly engineers, logistics and medical units as well as helicopter pilots.
That group would plan for a larger African Union-U.N. operation of more than 22,000 troops and police.
But the Sudanese leader made clear that until the interim arrangement was in place he would not discuss the larger troop deployment. The move dashed hopes that U.N. peacekeepers could be deployed soon in Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died, 4 million need emergency aid and 2.5 million are in makeshift camps.
Bashir's position also has thrown any U.N. planning in disarray since no country is willing to shoot its way into Darfur without Khartoum's consent.
The Sudanese president based his objections on the Darfur Peace Agreement of last May between the Khartoum government and one rebel group, barely touching on a much more recent agreement he endorsed in November that left troop planning to the African Union and the United Nations.
On attack helicopters, Bashir said they should be "limited to ensuring, in the event of threats, the protection of African Union forces and those supplied by the United Nations ..."
"Such missions should not include the protection of civilians, which pursuant to the Darfur Peace Agreement, is the responsibility of the Sudanese police," Bashir wrote.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said the secretary-general would discuss the letter with Security Council members on Thursday. He has also chosen a Nigerian as a force commander and a new special representative for Sudan, expected to be the foreign minister of the Congo Republic, Rodolphe Adada.
In the letter Bashir said troops and international police would best be confined to camps for uprooted people and should only monitor women from the camps collecting firewood. The women are frequently raped by pro-Khartoum militia.
China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, noted on Sunday that Sudan had agreed to the U.N. plans in November at a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
"Last year, in Addis, the understanding is clear that we are committed to this," Wang said. "So therefore, it seems that there are some miscommunications and misunderstandings."
Alejandro Wolff, a U.S. ambassador, said he was still studying Bashir's letter but was not surprised.
"I've been saying all along we take one step forward and one to one and a half steps back," Wolff said.
(Added reporting by Michele Nichols)