UN chief Annan visits strife-torn Darfur

NYALA, Sudan, May 28 (AFP) — UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited Darfur after warning warring parties and international donors time was running out to broker peace and avoid an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

The UN chief toured Kalma, a camp hosting around 110,000 people from Darfur displaced by two years of famine and conflict between ethnic minority rebels and government forces.

“This is one of my major operations and I think it is important to come and see my team and also to assess the situation,” he said.

“This is totally not acceptable and we will work with the authorities to make sure the IDPs (internally displaced people) are protected,” the UN chief added after listening to tribal leaders’ accounts of human rights violations.

Suleiman Abu Bakr, speaking on behalf of the tribal leaders, claimed that 56 people had been killed in the camp since March and 580 women sexually assaulted in recent months.

He blamed the attacks on Sudanese police and the infamous Janjaweed, the pro-government Arab militias which the government has used as proxies in its scorched-earth campaign to crush the Darfur rebellion.

The region is facing chronic food shortages because farmers have not been able to sow crops ahead of the forthcoming rainy season amid ongoing violence in the western region, the ICRC said in a statement.

As aid agencies struggle to cope with the flow of starving displaced Darfurians, the African Union peace mission in the region was also seeking to boost its security operation.

The pan-African body announced Friday, after Annan warned that the world was running “a race against time” to solve the Darfur crisis, that it had received 292 million dollars in donations.

The AU wants more than 460 million dollars in cash, military equipment and logistical support to boost its current 2,700-strong truce monitoring operation to more than 7,700 by September.

Annan urged NATO, the EU and individual countries to help the AU expand its operation in Darfur, a vast semi-arid region about the size of France.

Hedi Annabi, the deputy head of UN peacekeeping operations, said AU troops were effective in helping to stem the violence where deployed but underlined the importance of beefing up the force.

“Instability, violence and civilian suffering in this troubled region continue,” Annabi said in a briefing to the UN Security Council.

The UN chief welcomed the AU donations but stressed that additional resources were needed to cover Darfur’s relief effort and the reconstruction of Sudan’s pacified South.

“What we need is additional resources to cover both crises and we are appealing to the donors to really help us get the resources required to get the job done,” he said.

He warned that lack of funding in south Sudan, where a landmark peace deal was clinched between southern rebels and Khartoum’s government in January, may jeopardize the agreement’s implementation.

Annan is due to visit Rumbek and others areas in southern Sudan Sunday, on his first visit to the region since the deal between Khartoum and John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.

“We should not allow the peace agreement to get into trouble for a lack of money,” Annan said.

Before flying south, where an estimated 1.5 million people were killed in 21 years of civil war, Annan is due to meet Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and exert more pressure for a rapid solution to the Darfur crisis.

Annan said he was hopeful that negotiations between rebels and Khartoum, set to resume in Nigeria’s capital on June 10, would yield a peace deal.

“I hope when they get there this time, they are going to stay there and negotiate in a sustained manner until they get an agreement,” he said.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who is due to visit Sudan next week, acknowledged that Khartoum was now “working hard” towards a political solution for Darfur.

According to some estimates, no less than 300,000 people died and more than two million have been displaced in what the United Nations has described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.