Sudan to disarm Janjaweed militia in two months
Oct 30, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan said Monday that a plan had been set up to disarm Darfur’s infamous Janjaweed — the pro-government militia accused by Washington of genocide — and all other militias within two months.
“We have put in place a plan for disarming the militias in Darfur in two months, in cooperation with the African Union,” President Omar al-Beshir said in a televised speech marking the opening of the new parliamentary session.
Beshir did not say how the Janjaweed would be disarmed.
Government officials had told the Sudanese press two weeks ago that a two-month plan to disarm militias in Darfur had been drafted and submitted to the African Union.
The May 5 Abuja peace deal signed between Khartoum and the main rebel faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement calls for the disarmament of the Janjaweed.
The peace deal has failed to take hold however, with the other two rebel factions that took part in the talks rejecting it and Khartoum refusing to welcome UN peacekeepers to replace a stretched AU contingent.
Commentators and experts have been sceptical of any plan to disarm militias in Darfur, a territory roughly the size of France, in the absence of an effective peacekeeping force on the ground.
Khartoum has vehemently rejected the August UN Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
Its relations with the international community further deteriorated earlier this month when it expelled the top resident UN envoy, Jan Pronk.
At least 200,000 people have died as a result of fighting, famine and disease, and more than two million fled their homes since rebels launched an uprising in Darfur in early 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the military and the Janjaweed.
In his speech, Beshir praised the African Union and said that the peace deal signed earlier this month in Asmara with a coalition of eastern rebels was evidence that Sudan needed no western assistance.
“The Asmara agreement has given evidence that the Sudanese alone can solve their differences,” he said.
(AFP)