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Sudanese Refute Genocide Claim, Warn Of Division Plots
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Sudanese refugees await access to humanitarian supplies on borders with Chad
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BRUSSELS
, July 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Sudanese officials
and experts refuted claims that the situation in war-torn
Darfur
mounted to a genocide campaign and warned of plots targeting the unity
of the oil-exporting country.
Sudanese
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail blasted a congressional
resolution describing the situation in
Darfur
as genocide.
"Congress
is always biased," he told The Associated Press at the
Brussels
headquarters for the European Union.
Ismail
insisted his government was doing all it can to end the conflict in
Darfur
, adding this requires time.
"There
exists a real problem which has to be resolved on a humanitarian,
political and security level and we intend to do that," he told
the French daily Le Monde in an interview published on Friday.
Sudanese
President Omar Omar al-Bashir on Friday, July 23, rejected
international pressure on his country allegedly to ameliorate
humanitarian crisis in
Darfur
.
"The
international concern over
Darfur
is actually a targeting of the Islamic state in
Sudan
," Bashir told a public meeting south of
Khartoum
.
The
US House of Representatives had unanimously approved a resolution
declaring that "the atrocities unfolding in
Darfur
... are genocide".
In
apparently coordinated move, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has
asked
Downing Street
and Foreign Office officials to draw up plans for a possible military
intervention in
Sudan
.
No
Legal Basis
Ibrahim
Ahmed, a Sudanese political analyst, told Reuters Saturday, July 24,
there is no legal ground for the US Congress to call violence in
Darfur
genocide.
He
noted that the
US
administration and the African Union have refrained from using the
term.
Even
the United Nations, which declared the situation in
Darfur
the world's worst humanitarian crisis, has not called it a genocide.
"This
smacks of a strategy drafted to target all of
Sudan
, and not to protect
Darfur
," said Hassan Mekki, the director of African Studies in
Khartoum
.
"The
British government want to remap
Sudan
and allow more influence to the Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement’s John Garang," he told Aljazeera on Saturday.
Garang
had earlier clinched a deal with the
Khartoum
government granting the south right of self-determination, a move
expected to lead to the region’s secession. The talks on the
agreement were mainly brokered by the
United States
.
Mekki
pointed out that
London
had in the past allied itself with Arab militias now accused of
atrocities in
Darfur
.
Abdullah
El-Ashaal, an Egyptian international law expert, said there are plans
to display the Sudanese government of complacency to liquidate African
tribes in
Darfur
.
"The
fuss is aimed to internationalize the
Darfur
crisis in a bid for
Darfur
to get independence or join the new southern
Sudan
after expected cession under a 20003 Machakos agreement,"
El-Ashaal wrote in the respectable London-based Arab newspaper
Al-Hayat.
He
spoke of plans for lobbying human rights organizations to send
fact-finding missions to
Darfur
to "make the situation in the turbulent region at the top of
world’s concerns and even more dangerous than
Iraq
".
The
expert, a former assistant foreign minister, accused American media of
launching a ferocious campaign against
Sudan
and a headline coverage of
Darfur
to draw an international attention to the crisis.
Resuming
Talks
As
Sudan
came under barrage of attacks from
Washington
and
London
, the UN said two rebel groups in
Darfur
have agreed to new talks with
Khartoum
to try to defuse the tension.
UN
Spokesman Fred Eckhard said the African Union and UN officials now had
to contact the Sudanese government to see when the talks could resume
in
Addis Ababa
.
The
Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)
rebel groups had walked
out Saturday, July 17, from the African Union-mediated peace
talks in the Ethiopian capital.
They
insisted their demands must be met before they would start negotiating
with
Khartoum
.
Iraq-Like
Scenario
Sudanese
analysts and ordinary people have warned against an Iraq-like scenario
in
Sudan
, which has promising oil reserves and began exports of it in 2000.
"Is
Iraq
not enough? Do they want to destroy us too? ...
America
wants everyone who is Arab to pay. They do not understand
anything," 34-year-old driver Ismail Gasmalseed in
Khartoum
, told Reuters on Saturday.
The
Sudanese foreign minister had cautioned that if Britain sent soldiers
to the region, "in one or two months, these forces are going to
be considered by people of Darfur as occupying forces and the same
incidents you are now facing in Iraq are going to be repeated in
Darfur".
Unlike
the US-led invasion of
Iraq
, any military intervention in
Sudan
is likely to come under UN auspices.
Earlier,
the
US
began circulating a new draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at
stepping up pressure on
Sudan
.
The
draft includes a call for an immediate arms embargo on weapons
supplied to the militia in
Darfur
, and calls on the Sudanese government to "bring to justice"
militia leaders within 30 days, or face the prospect of further
unspecified sanctions.
UN
Secretary of State Kofi Annan said he thought the resolution would be
successful, although an earlier, weaker resolution faced resistance
from
Russia
,
Pakistan
and
China
.
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