The United Nations is confident that it can muster the 26,000 soldiers and police needed to establish the world’s largest peacekeeping operation in Darfur, but the mission faces daunting logistical challenges, planners say.

The UN troops will have to build camps and airstrips in the vast, inhospitable desert of western Sudan to handle up to 20 flights a day just to bring in water for the peacekeepers, who use 85 litres each a day.

UN officials will host a troop contributors meeting for the new Darfur force in New York on Friday. “Every-thing is very urgent now. We have been working very hard to make sure that now the train that has left the station [it] arrives on time,” Jean-Marie Guehenno, the UN undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, said.

The hybrid UN-African Union force was authorised by the UN Security Council on Tuesday in an attempt to halt four years of slaughter that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and made two million people homeless.

The force will comprise up to 19,555 military personnel, as well as 3,772 international police, and 19 special police units with up to 2,660 officers.

Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa have signalled that they are ready to send large contigents to maintain the “predominantly African character” of the force – a key demand of Sudan.

Their numbers will be topped up with non-African contingents from Muslim nations such as Bangladesh, Jordan, Indonesia and Pakistan. Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria and Nepal are in line to provide the large numbers of police to patrol refugee camps.

Planners are especially eager to find logistics experts and engineers to set up the UN presence in Darfur. The peacekeepers will have to build airstrips to supplement the only airfield in the region at El Fasher. They hope to drill for water in a potential underground lake recently identified by Boston University from images taken from space. But diplomats said that the water could be under 300 feet of rock and the peacekeepers may have to bring in 20 flights a day to keep themselves supplied with water.

France and Denmark were among the first yesterday to say that they would offer logistics troops. China, which is already sending 275 peacekeepers to help the existing African Union mission, has also indicated it could send more troops.

Britain will not send any ground troops, but may offer logistics and headquarters staff to demonstrate its commitment to the operation.

Tuesday’s resolution calls for the UN to set up an an “initial operational capability for the headquarters” by October and be ready to take over from the current 7,000-strong African Union mission by the end of the year.

But Mr Guehenno injected a note of caution. “We won’t have everything by October. We don’t have a standing army,” he said.

“The expectations on the ground are enormous. We don’t want to disappoint. The 26,000 are not going to be there on January 1.”

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