Sudan MPs end boycott after Beshir vows to rein in pro-government militias

KHARTOUM, Oct 26 (AFP) — MPs from the rebellion-wracked Darfur region of western Sudan announced they were ending a four-day-old boycott of parliament Sunday after receiving assurances from President Omar al-Beshir that he would rein in pro-government Arab militias.

“President Beshir has pledged to put and end to the unlawful activities of the Janjaweed and other militias, whom he considers as outlaws, and to the armed banditry in our region,” said Khalid Bilal, who heads the West Darfur State parliamentary group.

“We are now satisfied with the presidential pledges and will go back to the assembly,” he said, adding that the region’s 65 MPs intended to review the government’s implementation of the pledges periodically.

The MP said presidential security adviser Major General Al-Tayeb Ibrahim Mohamed Khair and national security chief Major General Salah Abdallah had also attended Saturday night’s meeting with Beshir which he described as “good and fruitful”.

The indigenous non-Arab minorities of the Darfur region have long complained of depredations by the Janjaweed and other government-sponsored Arab militias.

The anger boiled over into an armed rebellion earlier this year by the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

The militias, originally formed and armed by the government to help fight the rebels, are guilty of “robbery, looting and killing” and are out of control, Bilal told AFP last week.

He said that in his own constituency of Azoum Daresah, about 100 people were killed, 150 injured and more than 25,000 forced to flee their homes when 4,000 armed men torched 28 villages earlier this month.

The number of displaced people is now higher than the UN estimate of 400, 000, he added.

The conflict between the SLM and government troops in Darfur, a semi-desert region bordering Chad, has left some 3,000 dead so far this year, according to UN estimates.