UN Security Council passes resolution on Sudan conflicts
NAIROBI, Nov 19, 2004 (AP) — The U.N. Security Council Friday passed a new resolution on Sudan , offering to support peace processes in that country intended to end two civil wars that have left millions dead and many more homeless.
The council passed unanimously resolution number 1574, its third Sudan resolution, during a rare meeting outside of New York intended to focus world attention on the conflicts in Africa’s largest country.
The council was pushing for the rapid conclusion of a two-year peace process to end a 21-year civil war in southern Sudan , while highlighting the need to end the 21-month fighting in the western Darfur region.
Meanwhile, Sudanese government and rebel officials signed an agreement Friday promising to end the civil war in southern Sudan by the end of the year in front of the security council.
Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and southern rebel leader John Garang, the main peace negotiators for the two sides, made a similar pledge last year to complete an agreement by 2003, but missed that deadline and two more deadlines after that.
Another conflict in the western Darfur region started in February 2003, when the government attempted to crush two non-Arab African rebel groups who took up arms to fight for more power and resources. The government responded by backing Arab militias, who are accused of targeting civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration believes the militias have committed genocide, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Danforth, said. The conflict has driven 1.8 million people from their homes, and at least 70,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since March.
Ahead of the meeting in Nairobi, human rights groups insisted the council take a harder line by imposing an arms embargo or threatening sanctions against the government.
The aid agency Oxfam International condemned the Security Council’s new resolution for failing to take a tougher line to help the people suffering in Darfur.
“From New York to Nairobi a trail of weak resolutions on Darfur has led nowhere,” said Caroline Nursey of Oxfam. “Yesterday Oxfam was unable to get vital aid to 200,000 people in Darfur who are cut off by renewed violence – today they would still be in the camps, still waiting for aid…We needed the council to take action now, not yet more diplomatic dithering.”
“I regret to report that the security situation in Darfur continued to deteriorate despite the cease-fire agreement signed earlier,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told council members at the headquarters of the United Nations’ environment and human settlements agencies.
The meeting in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is only the fourth time the security council has met outside its New York headquarters since 1952.