US criticises appointment of Darfur militia leader in Sudan govt

January 22, 2008 (NEW YROK/WASHINGTON) — The United States on Tuesday strongly criticized Sudanese government for appointing to a senior position a militia coordinator Washington accused of involvement in Darfur atrocities and war crimes.

Sudanese president said over the weekend that Musa Hilal, one of four men subjected to travel restrictions and asset freezes in a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution on Darfur, had been picked as an adviser to Federal Affairs Minister Abdel Basit Sabderat.

“We deplore the government of Sudan’s decision to name him to a senior position. He is under both US and UN sanctions for the role he played in Darfur,” Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, told reporters.

“The regime in Khartoum shows contempt for the rule of law,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters. “The man is not only on the U.N. sanctions list but also on the U.S. list. So it is totally unacceptable.”

In April 2006, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Hilal and three other Sudanese nationals alleged to have committed war crimes in Darfur.

Speaking in Turkey on Monday, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir dismissed criticism of Hilal, saying he had “contributed greatly to stability and security in the region.”

“In Sudan we don’t think the claims against Hilal are true,” he said. “The people who really commit murders in Darfur are receiving help from Europe and others.”

Khalilzad said he would bring up the issue of Hilal on Tuesday at a meeting with the other four permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China.

“We’ll discuss it today,” he said. “We have a P-5 meeting on this issue among ourselves, on the Sudan situation.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to meet Bashir on the sidelines of an African Union summit next week to discuss delays in deploying a joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping mission.

Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, told reporters that if Ban brings up Hilal at the meeting, Bashir will tell him that Khartoum does not listen to outside parties when filling government posts.

“We will tell anybody who talks to us about this that this is not his business and they should respect the sovereignty of the country,” he said.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has also condemned Hilal’s appointment and called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to raise the matter when he is due to meet Bashir at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa in February.

HRW said that “Hilal and his men played an integral role in the two-year campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Sudanese army and Janjaweed militia” in Darfur.

“Scores of victims, witnesses to attacks, and even members of the Sudanese armed forces have named Hilal as the top commander of government-backed Janjaweed militias responsible for numerous atrocities in Darfur in 2003 and 2004,” it said.

According to UN estimates, more than 200,000 people have died and more than two million people have been displaced in Darfur as a result of the combined effect of war, famine and disease since the conflict erupted more than four years ago.

(ST)

(Material for this report provided by the AFP and Reuters)