The fate of AU peacekeepers in the war torn Darfur region of Sudan is hanging in a balance as the United Nations considers withdrawing of its non-essential troops from the already scanty peacekeepers in the country.

It is not clear if the AU will follow suit and withdraw its staff from Sudan should the UN go ahead with its plans.

The decision by the UN has been necessitated by the recent attack on its peacekeeping force in the Darfur region.

The attack, described as “one of the deadliest on its troops” left 7 peacekeepers dead including a Ghanaian police officer.

Several others were wounded.

Meanwhile the UN is seeking to bring genocide charges against the Sudanese President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir.

The move has been lauded by an International Relations Expert, Dr. Yaw Gebe of the Legon Centre for International Affairs.

He told Joy news that al-Bashir has “shown disrespect and high level of intransigence” for far too long that should have attracted sanctions from the AU and the UN.

“It is in the right direction for UN to take this initiative,” he said adding that “I even think that to some extend, sanctions should have been imposed a very long time ago, but that didn’t (happen) until this recent development.”

According to the 2008 Global Peace Index (GPI) rankings for 140 countries, Sudan placed 138 after Somalia 139 and Iran 140 as the most violent country.

Judges at the International Criminal Court have yet to decide if there are reasonable grounds to issue an arrest warrant against Omar al-Bashir.

As of May this year, the BBC’s website said the joint UN-African Union Darfur mission, Unamid, included nearly 9,600 uniformed personnel and about 1,300 civilian staff, both international and local.

Even though it is not clear how many will be withdrawn, the BBC quoted Gen Martin Luther Agwai, Unamid force commander as saying the peacekeepers would maintain their unit strength and would not stop patrolling the troubled areas in the region.

"We will continue to protect the UN personnel and UN facilities that are here and we will continue to help the humanitarian organisations to continue to do their job of rendering humanitarian services to the people in Darfur," Gen Agwai said.

A Sudanese official told the BBC that he had been informed by Unamid the evacuation would begin on Tuesday.

"This is a unilateral decision which the Sudanese government was not involved in," Mr Mutrif Seddeek told the BBC.

The Darfur conflict has claimed up to 300,000 lives and uprooted 2.5 million people since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003.

Critics accuse Sudan of arming janjaweed Arab militias that have terrorized Darfur villages — a charge Khartoum denies.