Sudan hails Egyptian role in UN rights resolution

March 31, 2007 (CAIRO) — A Sudanese envoy has hailed Egyptian efforts to reach a resolution of the UN human rights council on Darfur without an explicit candemnation of government violations of human rights in Darfur.

Speaking to Egyptian television on Friday 30 March, Ibrahim Merghani, the Sudanese envoy to the council, described the resolution as conciliatory.

The resolution has not singled the Sudanese government for criticism, he said. It urged all parties to respect residents of the troubled region, he added.

Earlier on Friday, the UN human rights council adopted a resolution, passed unanimously by the 47-state, expressed deep concern at the “seriousness of ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur”.

“This is the strongest statement that the Council has yet made on Darfur and the strongest it has made on any situation outside the Middle East,” one Western diplomat tolf Reuters.

“It talks about violations and that means the Sudanese state, because in human rights law only states can commit violations,” the diplomat added.

Human rights activists had seen Darfur as a test of the effectiveness of the Geneva-based Council, set up last year to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.

(ST)