(MENAFN- Arab Times) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called a crisis meeting of his top advisers on the deteriorating situation in South Sudan today and proposed reinforcing the United Nations peacekeeping force there in a bid to stem a conflict increasingly marked by ethnically targeted killings. The Security Council held emergency closed-door talks with Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Edmund Mulet to discuss the Secretary-General's proposals to reinforce UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) with 5,500 more peacekeepers as well as additional assets. "I am determined to ensure that UNMISS [UN Mission in South Sudan] has the means to carry out its central task of protecting civilians," he told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York just hours after arriving back from a visit to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines. "I will be spending most of today calling regional leaders and others to bolster military support for UNMISS, as well as political backing for efforts to defuse the crisis," he said of the force, which currently has over 6,800 troops and police in the country.
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