UN’s Egeland unbowed by Khartoum row
April 10, 2006 (DUBAI) — Senior UN official Jan Egeland warned Today that he would not hold his punches if the Sudanese government made good on its promise to allow him into the restive western Darfur region after all.
“Maybe I’ll go,” the UN assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs told AFP when asked about Khartoum’s belated invitation to him to visit Darfur.
“But I will be working on Sudan very actively because the situation is becoming increasingly bad.”
Egeland said he hoped the row over his barring from Darfur, which Khartoum insisted was only temporary, was now behind him.
But he added that he remained concerned about the pressures placed on aid groups operating in the region.
“I hope it (the row) will be closed. Now they are inviting me but they are still expelling humanitarian organisations from Darfur and that’s very bad,” he said.
“Civilians are attacked, security is decreasing while the number of people needing us is increasing.
“We do not have enough money, we do not have enough resources.”
Egeland had warned Friday ahead of his planned visit to Sudan that the world was failing the people of Darfur after more than three years of armed uprising by ethnic minority rebels and repression by government-backed militias.
“The world is not providing sufficient pressure on the political parties to make a peaceful solution to this and the world is not providing security,” said Egeland, who has been an outspoken critic of Khartoum’s opposition to the replacement of African Union monitors in Darfur by UN peacekeepers.
((ST/AFP)