Sudan trying to keep Darfur promises-U.N
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Raids by Sudanese forces and Arab militiamen have worsened a desperate situation in Darfur, rights groups say, but the United Nations said Khartoum was making serious efforts to keep pledges to curb the violence.
The United Nations has told Sudan to curb marauding Janjaweed militia or face sanctions, but rights group Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday fresh atrocities disproved Sudanese claims security was returning to the western region.
“In many rural areas and small towns in Darfur, government forces and the Janjaweed militias continue to routinely rape and assault women and girls when they leave the periphery of the camps and towns,” the New York-based group said in a report.
Janjaweed raped six girls aged 13 to 16 and beat other women at a militia checkpoint in western Darfur in July, it said.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told a meeting of leaders from most of the tribes in Darfur, including those from both sides of the conflict, that they would be called upon to help bring stability to the region.
“The following stage will witness a boosting of the tribal leadership so that it may contribute to the maintaining of security in Darfur and disarmament,” witnesses reported him saying at the Wednesday meeting.
Bashir added boosting the role of tribal leadership was within the framework of the action plan for Darfur signed by the government and the United Nations.
The United Nations said in a statement from Geneva on Tuesday that the Janjaweed were still attacking some of the more than one million people displaced by fighting in remote Darfur, and that Sudan had carried out fresh helicopter attacks.
The Security Council has told Sudan to make real efforts to rein in the Janjaweed and improve security in its western Darfur region or face unspecified sanctions.
The U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told reporters in Khartoum on Wednesday the U.N. reports were still being checked to see if and where the attacks had taken place.
Asked about the reported helicopter attacks, he said: “Attacks, if reported, have to be checked. Whether they took place, where they took place, we are checking that at the moment.”
“So far in all my talks I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to keep the promises made,” he added.
SUDAN SAYS U.N. STATEMENTS CONTRADICTORY
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the U.N. statements were contradictory and misleading public opinion.
“We have noticed that U.N. statements at the moment are in constant contradiction … each department within it is acting without coordination,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
“This lack of consensus is misleading to public opinion and we would not want the current contradictions to leave the government to rethink its commitment towards the U.N.,” he said.
Sudanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdel Wahab told Reuters: “We believe that this statement is very vague and it’s sourceless and we believe it is inconsistent with the judgment made by the special representative Jan Pronk.”
A statement from the armed forces distributed to journalists on Wednesday denied the attacks took place.
“The government armed forces would like to affirm that this allegation of the resumption of air bombardment and attacks by so-called Janjaweed is false,” it said.
Rights groups and Darfur rebels say Khartoum has used the militia, known locally as Janjaweed — a term derived from the Arabic for “devils on horseback” — to loot and burn African farming villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Khartoum denies the charge, calling the Janjaweed outlaws.
The Sudanese government says it has deployed 10,000 police to Darfur and last week pledged to set up safe areas for the one million people the United Nations says have been uprooted.
But Human Rights Watch said Khartoum was absorbing the Janjaweed into its security forces instead of disarming them. Government claims that it was ending impunity for Janjaweed leaders, as demanded by the United Nations, were doubtful, it said.
Sudan has said international pressure over Darfur aims to undermine the country’s Islamist government, which Washington lists as a “sponsor of terror”.
Sudan’s Bashir said in remarks published on Wednesday that the United States and Europe were not interested in the wellbeing of people in Darfur but were exploiting violence there for their own ends.
“America and Europe have aims that do not include the safety and comfort of people in Darfur,” he said in an interview with Lebanon’s al-Mustaqbal newspaper.
The African Union has sent observers to Darfur to monitor a shaky truce signed in April and the Netherlands will begin to fly in 154 Rwandan troops to protect the monitors on Saturday.
Sudan has rejected any African Union peacekeepers.
Two main rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum in early 2003. The United Nations estimates Darfur violence has killed 50,000 and made two million short of food and medicine. Sudan disputes the death toll.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Opheera McDoom in Cairo, Madeline Chambers in London, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Lin Noueihed in Beirut)