Powell threatens Sudan with UN resolution
(Recasts with Powell/Ismail news conference)
By Saul Hudson
KHARTOUM, June 29 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell threatened the Sudanese government with unspecified U.N. Security Council action on Tuesday if it fails to crack down on Arab militias whose actions he said are approaching genocide against African villagers in the western Darfur region.
“Unless we see more movement soon…it may be necessary for the international community to begin considering other actions, to include Security Council action,” Powell told a news conference with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.
The United States wants Khartoum to end attacks by the militias, provide full access for humanitarian aid and restart political talks with rebel groups in Darfur, he said.
The Sudanese government has already pledged to disarm the militias, known as the Janjaweed, and Ismail said he hoped that during Powell’s visit they could agree on how to do this.
On his plane to Khartoum earlier on Tuesday, Powell told reporters he would give Sudanese leaders what he called “a very direct message about how the United States and the international community see the horrific situation”.
“We need to see action promptly,” he added.
A senior U.S. official said that up to one million displaced Sudanese could die this year in the Darfur region because of a humanitarian crisis blamed on Khartoum.
One million Darfuris have fled their homes in the past 18 months because of the conflict in the arid region between the Janjaweed, the government and two rebel groups who say they are acting to protect the villagers.
U.N. officials and human rights groups have said the Janjaweed were carrying out ethnic cleansing. Some organisations have likened it to the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s.
Relief organisations are racing to take food and medicine to camps for displaced people before the imminent rainy season cuts off vast part of the region.
“People are dying and the death rate is going to go up significantly… We see indicators and elements that would start to move you toward a genocidal conclusion, but we’re not there yet,” Powell said on the plane from Turkey. The Sudanese government rejects allegations that it supports the Janjaweed.
On arrival in Khartoum, Powell went straight into talks with Ismail and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
PROMISE OF ACCESS
In a speech before Powell arrived, Bashir said his government would redouble efforts to secure access to the needy.
Analysts say the Sudanese army has worked with the Janjaweed but the militias are not completely under its control. The government has limited resources to impose law and order in an undeveloped region the size of France.
Making the first visit to Sudan by such a senior U.S. official in more than two decades, Powell declined to specify what action the U.S. would take against Sudan.
But he warned that the United States was already working on a U.N. resolution about Darfur which could lead to international sanctions against Africa’s largest country.
Sudan could also miss the benefits, such as improving relations with Washington, which it expects for resolving a separate conflict in the south earlier this year, he added.
Criticised for responding too slowly to the crisis and under pressure in Congress to do more, Powell will meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Khartoum on Wednesday and visit Darfur to see the catastrophe for himself.
Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier there was little the international community could now do to stop about 300,000 people dying in the region this year and the toll could be up to one million people.
The spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme in Khartoum, Marcus Prior, said it was premature to make such predictions.
(Additional reporting by Nima Elbagir)