US Zoellick in Darfur to support African Union

By Opheera McDoom

EL-FASHER, Sudan, June 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick arrived on Friday in Sudan’s Darfur region, where more than half the population is going hungry and African Union troops are struggling to keep the peace.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick.

Zoellick arrived in the dusty region with little official fanfare and headed straight to the AU headquarters to be briefed on the security situation by the chief of the mission, who is in charge of around 2,300 troops and hundreds of civilian police.

“This visit is … to assess the humanitarian and security situation (and) to show support for the African Union mission,” a senior State Department official said.

More than half of Darfur’s population need food aid, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Thursday, with rural families joining refugees in the food queues.

Zoellick visited Sudan in March, met with senior government officials and travelled to Darfur and the south, where a peace deal signed in January is being implemented.

He was keen to emphasise on that visit the importance of the North-South peace deal and its relation to finding a lasting solution to the Darfur rebellion, which is in its third year.

“If you have progress on one and not the other it brings it down so you have to have progress on both,” the State Department official said.

The United States calls the violence in Darfur genocide, an assertion repeated by President George W. Bush on Wednesday. A U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry stopped short of finding genocide in Darfur but said heinous crimes against humanity may have taken place.

The U.N. Security Council has instructed the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes in Darfur, the first such referral.

Zoellick will travel to Kutum town in North Darfur on Friday, where some of the first attacks during the rebellion took place, and will meet with tribal leaders and aid agencies.

He will later return to Khartoum to meet with First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, in charge of the Darfur file, and the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk.