Senegalese FM blasts AU on Darfur
DAKAR, July 20 (AFP) — The foreign minister of Senegal on Wednesday blasted the African Union for not moving quickly enough to stop the bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region which the United States again labeled genocide.
Cheikh Tidiane Gadio made his comments at a news conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice where they urged greater efforts by Sudan, the African Union and its international supporters to end the Darfur crisis.
Gadio said the Senegalese government was “totally disatisfied” with the fact that the AU had claimed the ability to end the bloodshed, which has left up to 300,000 people dead, and did not follow through.
Senegal believed the situation was “totally unacceptable.”
“We don’t like the fact that the African Union has asked the international community to allow us to bring an African solution to an African problem and unfortunately the logistics from our own governments do not follow.”
Rice, on her first trip to Africa as Secretary of State, reiterated the US assessment of the bloodshed in Darfur since fighting broke out in February 2003 between rebels and government forces and their militia allies.
“The United States believes that by our accounts it was and is genocide,” Rice said in her first direct reference to the assessment first made by her predecessor Colin Powell last year.
US officials have more recently been relunctant to use the term.
While pressing the Sudan government to do more to end the violence in Darfur in the country’s west, Rice said a more focused approach was needed involving the 53-member African Union and the international community.
“The United States cannot do this alone, we need everybody to make a maximum effort including the African Union and including other members of the Security Council,” she said.
“The African Union has the lead in this, we have tried to help and we will continue to try to help but I think Africans believe this is a conflict… best resolved on the ground by Africans.”
Rice, who was travelling Wednesday to Sudan for talks with President Omar al-Beshir and his new vice president John Garang, said she was looking for changes from the new unity government formed as a result of a peace accord signed in January between Khartoum and southern rebels.
“I will start from the point that it can also be a new day if this new government… exercises its responsibilities to all the people of the Sudan including the people of Darfur,” she said.
“We don’t rely on words, we rely on actions. We have gotten some help from the Sudanese government (on Darfur) but by no means enough,” she said.
Rice and Gadio made their comments at the end of an economic conference here before Rice headed off for Sudan where the African Union is seeking to more than double its monitoring forces in Darfur to 7,700 by September.
Rice, who is making the visit to Sudan after three trips by her deputy Robert Zoellick, on Tuesday signaled concern about the progress of the deployment.