Rice expresses outrage at treatment of entourage by Sudanese security
By ANNE GEARAN
KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 21, 2005 (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a congratulatory round of meetings with officials of the new unified Sudanese government Thursday, but expressed outrage that Sudanese security forces manhandled aides and reporters accompanying her.
“It makes me very angry to be sitting there with their president and have this happen,” she said. “They have no right to push and shove.” Rice made her remarks to reporters after she and her entourage were aboard an airplane preparing to leave the Sudanese capital.
“Diplomacy 101 says you don’t rough your guests up,” Rice senior adviser Jim Wilkinson had said earlier as he and reporters travelling with Rice faced off with guards at the ultra-high-security residence of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir.
El-Bashir’s guards elbowed Americans and tried to rip a tape away from a U.S. reporter. At another point, Rice’s interpreter and some other aides accompanying her were blocked at a gate.
Ambassador Khidair Haroun Ahmed, head of the Sudanese mission in Washington, attempted to smooth over the situation.
“Please accept our apologies,” he told reporters and Rice aides. “This is not our policy.”
But there was yet another scuffle with security shortly after he apologized when a U.S. television reporter tried to ask el-Bashir a question about his involvement with alleged atrocities.
Guards grabbed the reporter and muscled her toward the rear of the room as State Department officials shouted at the guards to leave her alone.
The session at el-Bashir’s residence capped a morning of meetings before a scheduled visit to the western Darfur providence, where the United States blames his government for recruiting and equipping rebel militiamen to massacre rural villagers and burn their homes.
Some rebels wore uniforms provided by the Sudanese Army, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios said Wednesday.
El-Bashir denies government involvement, but the United States and international organizations say his military sent helicopter gunships to bomb villages before rebels swept in with horses, guns and knives.
Prior to her meeting with el-Bashir, Rice said the United States is making a difference in relieving a refugee crisis and African peacekeeping troops are helping to stop atrocities.
“We are not where we were a year ago,” Rice said Wednesday, ahead of her first trip to Sudan as secretary of state. “We are in a different circumstance and the United States has spent a great deal of money and a lot of diplomatic and other energy to try and bring this conflict to a conclusion.”
War-induced hunger and disease have killed more than 180,000 people and driven more than two million from their homes in what Rice reaffirmed Wednesday the U.S. sees as a case of genocide. No reliable figures are available on the number of people directly killed in attacks, but it is believed to be even higher than the toll taken by hunger and disease.
Rice was touring a refugee camp in Darfur on Thursday, and meeting privately with women to discuss recurring sexual violence against women refugees. The camp, Abu Shouk, is the second-largest in Sudan, with more than 70,000 residents in mud brick huts.
Sudan formed a new reconciliation government this month, following a peace agreement to end a 21-year-year civil war between the Muslim north and the mainly Christian and animist south that killed an estimated two million people.
That conflict was separate from the Darfur killing, which began after ethnic African tribes took up arms in February 2003, complaining of discrimination and oppression by Sudan’s Arab-dominated government. The Sudanese government then allegedly responded by backing a counterinsurgency by Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.
El-Bashir remains in charge of the new government with former southern rebel leader John Garang installed as a new vice president. On Tuesday, Garang dissolved his guerrilla movement and dismissed all government officials in 10 former rebel-controlled southern states.
The United States has held the Arab-dominated former government at arm’s length, operating an embassy without a full ambassador and listing Sudan, Africa’s largest country, among the nations sponsoring terrorism.
Still, the U.S. administration has made Sudan a focus of diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, with $700 million US spent for humanitarian needs over the past two years. The United States also supplies logistical help for African Union troops newly installed as peacekeepers.
The period of “ethnic cleansing” has largely ended, Natsios said, and the Darfur crisis has now shifted to peacekeeping and the administration of huge refugee camps.
“The level of attacks has clearly diminished,” Natsios said. “The major reason for that, frankly, is there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy.”
The United Nations has estimated that 2,000 Sudanese villages have been completely or partially destroyed.
In addition to short-term humanitarian needs, the United States and others are trying to prevent the temporary camps from becoming permanent.
“I think the people in those camps want to go home,” Natsios said. “They want their land back and they want their animals back.”
He acknowledged that the camps can be attractive for people without many resources, and that some Sudanese city dwellers who were not victims of the Janjaweed have moved in to take advantage of food and services, including education.