Sudan, UN – tension mounts over Darfur
April 4, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan and the United Nations were at loggerheads over Darfur after a top UN envoy accused Khartoum of trying to cover up ongoing violence in the troubled region of western Sudan.
The authorities prevented chief humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland from visiting Darfur, sparking the most serious crisis between the two sides since it became clear that the UN was aiming to take over peacekeeping operations from the embattled African Union (AU).
“I believe the government does not want me to see what is going on Darfur,” Egeland said on Monday. “I wanted to go to a place where tens of thousands of people were displaced.”
Washington, which has labelled the brutal repression by the government and its Janjaweed militia proxies of the three-year-old Darfur rebellion a genocide, said the incident was “deeply disturbing”.
“There is a crying humanitarian need to address in Darfur. And that’s why it’s so hard to understand why a government would refuse to allow a senior UN official responsible for providing relief to a region to help its own citizens,” said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
The main Darfur rebel movement charged that Khartoum was systematically obstructing “any attempts to discover and understand what is actually happening on the ground in Darfur.
“The regime will do whatever it can to prevent people from making reports that could strengthen the case for sending UN troops in Darfur,” Sudan Liberation Movement spokesman Mahjub Hussein told AFP.
“An increased number of government troops and Janjaweed are now massed in the Geneina region as part of Sudan’s efforts to bring down the regime of Chadian President Idriss Deby,” he added.
Tension has mounted at the Sudanese-Chadian border in recent months, with both sides trading accusations of supporting the other’s rebels.
Egeland, known for his outspoken comments on the Darfur situation, said aid workers were being harassed by government troops and Janjaweed.
At the same time, the Norwegian Refugee Council — which runs a refugee camp housing some 100,000 internally displaced people in Darfur — announced that its authorisation had not been renewed by the authorities.
Egeland pointed out that his Norwegian nationality had been raised as an issue by the authorities since the global crisis that flared up in January between Europe and the Muslim world over cartoons deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammed and first carried by Scandinavian newspapers.
Sudan argued that the timing was simply not right for Egeland’s visit as it roughly coincided with the celebrations marking the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, with tempers still running high in the region over the cartoons.
The visit “was postponed because it would coincide with the religious celebrations of the birth of Mohammed the Prophet while the Sudanese people are still angry over the cartoons that insulted the Prophet,” Sudanese Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Al-Sammai al-Wasila al-Sammai, told AFP.
He also denied it was cancelled due to Egeland’s strong support for a UN force in Darfur, saying Sudan had simply requested a 10-day delay.
Amid the fresh tension, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday for talks on Darfur with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir.
Arab countries, including Egypt, have largely opposed the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur but failed to agree on solid assistance for the existing AU contingent during last week’s Arab summit in Khartoum.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, who was travelling with Mubarak on his rare one-day visit, said his country was willing to upgrade its participation in the AU contingent.
He also renewed Egypt’s commitment to the faltering AU-sponsored peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria.
The United Nations has indicated it could send peacekeepers by the end of the year or at the beginning of 2007 to take over from AU troops, which have failed to restore peace in Darfur.
Since the war broke out in the vast western Sudanese region more than three years ago, the combined effect of fighting and a dire humanitarian crisis has left up to 300,000 people dead and more than two million displaced, according to some estimates.
(ST/AFP)