Sudan sees western and Christian hands in Darfur conflict

KHARTOUM, Feb 18 (AFP) — The Sudanese government has accused Western and Christian groups of helping spark the rebellion in the western Darfur region, a report said Wednesday.

The president’s political adviser, Qutbi al-Mahdi, was quoted as telling the independent Al Sahafa daily that the groups were exploiting regional, ethnic and tribal differences to try break up the country.

“The (Sudanese) government is monitoring these circles which have played a role in aggravating and complicating the southern problem and have now shown concern with Darfur,” he said.

The groups have “summoned all (the) leaders of the rebellion to Europe and the United states and promised support to them,” he claimed.

Some 3,000 people have been killed and another 670,000 displaced within Sudan itself by the Darfur conflict pitting government troops and their Arab militia allies against rebels drawn mainly from the region’s non-Arab minorities.

Another 100,000 Sudanese are estimated to have fled across the border into Chad because of the rebellion that erupted a year ago over the region’s alleged economic neglect by the government.

Mahdi specifically named Baroness Caroline Cox’s Christian Solidarity International, which has long campaigned against alleged human rights abuses in the country and the slave trade.

President Omar al-Beshir said earlier this month that the army had crushed the Darfur rebellion and offered an amnesty to rebels who surrendered their weapons, although hostilities have reportedly continued.

In a related development, Khartoum and the major rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, on Tuesday resumed peace talks in Kenya aimed at ending the main civil war, which has lasted 21 years.

The war in Sudan, rated as Africa’s longest after Angola’s civil war ended, erupted in 1983 and pitted the south, where most observe traditional African religions and Christianity, against the Muslim, Arabized north.

The conflict and war-related famine and disease have claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced an estimated four million people.