Sudan president slams Western role in Darfur ahead of truce talks
KHARTOUM, Oct 4 (AFP) — Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir hit out at the West’s role in Darfur as a government delegation headed to neighbouring Chad Monday for talks on a troubled truce in the ravaged western region.
Beshir accused Western governments and aid organizations of exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to engage in Christian missionary work among the region’s overwhelmingly Muslim population, the state-owned daily Al-Anbaa reported.
“The foes of the Muslim nation are seeking to… deny the needy aid from Islamic organisations to pave the way for restricting relief distribution to suspect Western and church organisations as a cover for missionary activity,” Beshir charged Sunday.
Ironically the Sudanese president was addressing the Islamic Dawa Organization, a state-backed Muslim welfare organization that has itself faced accusations in the West of exploiting relief work in south Sudan to make Muslim converts among its mainly Christian and animist population.
“Despite the conspiracies by the enemies of the Muslim nation against our faith and our country, and despite the classification and blackmailing the Organisation is facing, we look forward to it to play a greater role… in the areas affected by the war after peace is achieved,” Beshir said.
It was not the first time that Sudan’s military-backed regime had sought to portray the diplomatic crisis over the war in Darfur as a battle between Islam and Christianity.
But the latest diatribe came on the eve of talks in the Chadian capital Ndjamena on a widely broken April ceasefire between the Arab-dominated government and the minority rebels.
Khartoum’s delegation to the African-Union-sponsored talks, which are also to be attended by observers from the European Union and the United States is headed by junior foreign minister Al-Tigani Salih Fidhail, a foreign ministry official said.
As the delegation left, a Khartoum newspaper reported that seven Arab civilians, two of them women, had been killed in North Darfur state in an attack which government officials blamed on “outlaws”.
Another nine members of the Arab Ziadiyah tribe were wounded in Saturday’s ambush on the road between Mellit and the village of Kumah, the independent Akhbar Al-Youm daily said.
Some 50,000 people have died and 1.4 million fled their homes in Darfur since the launch of the rebel uprising early last year prompted a bloody clampdown by the government, according to UN estimates.
Many Arab tribes like the Ziadiyah were armed by the authorites and given free rein to attack minority villages suspected of supporting the rebels, in a policy that Germany and the United States say amounted to genocide.