World community demands action from Sudan on Darfur
PARIS, July 23 (AFP) — The international community stepped up efforts this week to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan’s western Darfur region, with Washington threatening sanctions against Khartoum if it does not bring Arab militias to heel.
The United States on Thursday presented a draft UN Security Council resolution authorizing sanctions on Sudan if it fails to prosecute leaders of the pro-government Janjaweed groups accused of widespread atrocities in Darfur.
“They have been supporting and sustaining some of these Janjaweed elements. This has to end,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in New York after talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Later Thursday, the US Congress unanimously passed a non-binding resolution qualifying the atrocities committed in Darfur as “genocide” and calling on the White House to lead international efforts to intervene in the region.
“It’s a catastrophe. People are dying at an increasing rate,” Powell said.
More than 10,000 people have died and over a million have been displaced since rebel groups rose up against Khartoum in February 2003, claiming that the mainly black African region has been ignored by the Arab government.
The uprising prompting a bloody crackdown by Sudanese troops and the pro-government Janjaweed, who have carried out what aid and rights groups have called a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Pope John Paul II on Thursday dispatched a special envoy to Darfur, with the Vatican comparing Darfur to “Rwanda in slow motion” — an allusion to the 1994 genocide that left at least 800,000 Rwandans dead.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is due to visit Darfur next week, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is expected to go to the violence-wracked region, which borders Chad, sometime in late August.
“The international community is very serious about this,” Annan said. “We will continue to insist that the government performs.”
Aid groups fear that the onset of the rainy season, combined with difficulties aid workers have encountered in gaining access to the refugee camps, could claim thousands of lives.
After visits by Powell and Annan to Darfur last month, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir promised to try Janjaweed leaders believed responsible for atrocities, disarm the groups and grant freedom of movement to aid workers.
The proposed UN resolution put forward by Washington threatens Sudan with unspecified sanctions within 30 days if it failed to prosecute militia leaders.
The text calls for an immediate arms embargo in Darfur and raises the possibility of sending peacekeepers to the region.
Experts from the 15 Security Council nations were to discuss the draft on Friday, diplomats said.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail, in Paris this week for talks with Barnier, said Khartoum “needs time” to restore order in Darfur, adding that a UN resolution would “complicate things”.
“The Janjaweed are a gang of faithless thieves and assassins, who have operated outside the law for some 10 years and who are taking advantage of a state of war,” the Sudanese minister told reporters.
Ismail said that “more than 60 percent” of the population in Darfur were against the rebels and that the Khartoum government was doing its best to disarm the militias.
He said the government had arrested “about 100” Janjaweed leaders, pledging that they would be brought to justice.
The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had ordered that plans be drawn up to send troops to Sudan, but Blair denied the report as “premature”.
“Now we rule nothing out, but we’re not at the stage yet (of sending troops),” Blair said.
When asked to comment on the report, Ismail said Khartoum would withdraw its forces from the region if British troops were to be deployed, adding: “We will give him the chance if he can give security to Darfur.”