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Sudan Strives to Keep Darfur Pledges

New Era (Windhoek)
NEWS
August 12, 2004
Posted to the web August 12, 2004
Khartoum
Sudan People's Liberation Army soldiers secure the airport during the arrival
of US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist before he met with Sudan People's
Liberation Army leader John Garang, Sunday, Aug 8, 2004 in Ntinga in Southern
Sudan. Frist and Garang held talks on the Sudan peace process as well as the
crisis in Darfur.
Raids by Sudanese forces and Arab militiamen have worsened a desperate
situation in Darfur, rights groups say, but the United Nations said Khartoum
was making serious efforts to keep pledges to curb the violence.
The United Nations has told Sudan to curb marauding Janja-weed militia or face
sanctions, but rights group Human Rights Watch said yesterday fresh atrocities
disproved Sudanese claims that security was returning to the western region.
"In many rural areas and small towns in Darfur, government forces and the
Janjaweed militias continue to routinely rape and assault women and girls when
they leave the periphery of the camps and towns," the New York-based group said
in a report.
Janjaweed raped six girls aged 13 to 16 and beat other women at a militia
checkpoint in Western Darfur in July, it said.
The United Nations said in a statement from Geneva on Tuesday that the
Janjaweed were still attacking some of the more than one million people
displaced by fighting in remote Darfur, and that Sudan had carried out fresh
helicopter attacks.
The Security Council has told Sudan to make real efforts to rein in the
Janjaweed and improve security in its western Darfur region or face unspecified
sanctions.
The UN secretary-general's special representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told
reporters in Khartoum yesterday the UN reports were still being checked to see
if and where the attacks had taken place.
Asked about the reported helicopter attacks, he said: "Attacks, if reported,
have to be checked. Whether they took place, where they took place, we are
checking that at the moment."
"So far in all my talks I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to
keep the promises made," he added.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the UN statements were
contra-dictory and misleading public opinion.
"We have noticed that UN statements at the moment are in constant
contradiction... each department within it is acting without coordination," he
told reporters yesterday.
"This lack of consensus is misleading to public opinion and we would not want
the current contradictions to leave the government to rethink its commitment
towards the UN," he said.
Sudanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdel Wahab told
Reuters: "We believe that this statement is very vague and it's sourceless and
believe it is inconsistent with the judgment made by the special representative
Jan Pronk."
Rights groups and Darfur rebels say Khartoum has used the militia, known
locally as Janjaweed - a term derived from the Arabic for "devils on horseback"
- to loot and burn African farming villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Khartoum denies the charge, calling the Janjaweed outlaws.
The Sudanese government says it has deployed 10 000 police to Darfur and last
week pledged to set up safe areas for the one million people the United Nations
says have been uprooted.
But Human Rights Watch said Khartoum was absorbing the Janjaweed into its
security forces instead of disarming them. Government claims that it was ending
impunity for Janjaweed leaders, as demanded by the United Nations, were
doubtful, it said.
Junior minister Abdel Wahab told Reuters reports from groups like Human Rights
Watch were trying to plant "seeds of conflagration between Sudan and the West."
Sudan has said interna-tional pressure over Darfur aims to undermine the count-
ry's Islamist government, which Washington lists as a "sponsor of terror".
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said in remarks published yesterday
that the United States and Europe were not interested in the wellbeing of
people in Darfur but were exploiting violence there for their own ends.
"America and Europe have aims that do not include the safety and comfort of
people in Darfur," Bashir said in an interview with Lebanon's al-Mustaqbal
newspaper.
"The Darfur issue is being blown up by people who do not want stability in
Sudan but target the country instead."
The AU has sent observers to Darfur to monitor a shaky truce signed in April
and the Netherlands will begin to fly in 154 Rwandan troops to protect the
monitors on Saturday.
Sudan has rejected any African Union peacekeepers.
Two main rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum in early 2003. The United
Nations estimates Darfur violence has killed 50 000 and made two million short
of food and medicine. Sudan disputes the death toll.

   

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