Sudan pledges to work with UN panel on Darfur

KHARTOUM, Oct 9 (AFP) — The Sudanese government said Saturday it would cooperate with a UN panel set up to determine whether genocide has taken place in the troubled region of Darfur.

Displaced Sudanese women and children travel towards Kalma camp, near Nyala south Darfur after fleeing from their village following a Janjaweed’s Arab militia attack October 7, 2004.

Justice Minister Ali Osman Yassin was quoted by Al-Ayam newspaper as saying he was chairing a legal committee established to work with the commission and “help it reach the truth” about the human rights situation in Darfur.

Sudan has said several times it was cooperating with the international community but has consistently been accused of obstructing aid agencies and efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur.

The five-member UN panel has been created by secretary-general Kofi Annan to look into allegations of genocide and investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur.

At least 50,000 people have been killed in the region and 1.4 million people have fled their homes since two rebel movements rose up against the Khartoum government in February 2003.

Khartoum’s response was to arm and support the Janjaweed, an Arab militia which has been accused of committing massive human rights abuses – murder, mass rape and the burning of villages – against Darfur’s black African people.

Mr Annan was asked to set up a commission in a UN Security Council resolution adopted last month after the United States said it believed genocide had been committed in Darfur, scene of what the UN describes as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

“We welcome the committee and its chairman [Italian judge Antonio Cassise],” Mr Yassin said.

“The government and the [justice] ministry will do everything they can to help the commission discharge its mission.”

“All we ask of this commission is to operate in the neutral spirit of its chairman and it will find from us every assistance to reach the truth. We expect it not to take extreme decisions and not to be hasty in its scrutiny and investigation.”

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved a resolution condemning the violence as genocide and calling for sanctions on the Khartoum government.

The “Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act” calls upon US President George W Bush to freeze the assets of senior Sudanese officials and calls for concerted UN action against the Sudanese government.

The Bill, which must now be reconciled with similar legislation passed last month by the US Senate, also provides humanitarian and development aid for Sudanese refugees.

Earlier in the week, Jan Pronk, the senior UN envoy dealing with the crisis in Darfur, said the Sudanese government had made no progress in stopping militia attacks against civilians in Darfur or disarming the militia.

In Geneva, the UN’s top humanitarian official Jan Egeland, said massive aid deliveries had improved the situation although insecurity remained troubling.

“We are making progress on the humanitarian front,” Mr Egeland, the UN assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, told journalists.

The UN’s World Food Program said earlier this week that it had managed to distribute food to 1.4 million people in Darfur during September, most of them displaced people living in camps.

“We have reached 200,000 more people than our goal for September,” Mr Egeland said, adding that death rates among the displaced were also decreasing.

Aid agencies were recording an average of about 10,000 deaths every month from June through August due to a variety of illnesses caused mainly by bad sanitary conditions and malnourishment.

But deaths were falling to about 5,000 to 6,000 a month.