Darfur ‘internal tribal problem’, not genocide: Sudanese official

OUAGADOUGOU, Sept 9 (AFP) — Sudanese Finance Minister Ahmed Hassan al-Zubeir responded defiantly Thursday to a declaration by Washington that the atrocities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region are genocide.

“This is just another sort of pressure brought against the government of Sudan by the United States and Western governments, the kind of general political pressure that shows the US is not a friend of Sudan,” al-Zubeir told AFP on leaving an African Union summit in Burkina Faso.

“We will prove that it is true that the conflict in Sudan is an internal tribal problem and it will be for the national government to solve this problem,” he said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate hearing Thursday that the United States had “concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring.”