Asian, Arab Countries must pressure Sudan on Darfur – UN

Oct 11, 2006 (GENEVA) — The governments of Arab countries as well as China, India, Pakistan and Malaysia should put pressure on Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Wednesday.

“It’s time to make the government of Sudan understand that this U.N. force is a global force,” said Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

Sudan’s government so far has opposed a plan approved by the U.N. Security Council to replace a peacekeeping force comprised of African Union troops with a 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. The new force would primarily be composed of African, Arab and Asian troops.

Egeland said Arab and important Asian countries that trade with Sudan needed to lend their support to efforts led by Western countries to convince Sudan to accept the U.N. peacekeepers. He said African countries needed to do more as well.

“Help us, because we are desperate here,” he told reporters in Geneva. “It is not a western project. It is a global project of solidarity with Sudan and the people of Darfur.”

Egeland said the help of these countries was urgently needed because the situation “is getting gradually worse and worse and worse.”

An estimated 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million people have been displaced in the Darfur conflict, which began in early 2003 when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Khartoum government. U.N. officials have criticized the government for bombing villages and supporting Arab militiamen blamed for rapes and killings.

Despite a May peace agreement, aid workers and rights groups say the violence has increased in recent months and Egeland warned militia groups have become more dangerous because they are now equipped with pickup trucks, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, whereas earlier they were riding on camels or horses with inferior weapons.

“The nightmare we are seeing in Darfur is continuing,” he said, adding militias “are more brutal than ever.”

Egeland said the violence has had severe humanitarian consequences, citing recent violence in South Darfur that caused aid workers to flee, leaving some 130,000 displaced people around the area of Gereida without necessary assistance.

“It was simply too dangerous,” Egeland said. He described the gathering of people around Gereida as probably the largest concentration of displaced people in the world.

Egeland said it was a bad signal that the U.N. Human Rights Council last week failed to take action on human rights violations in the country.

“It’s a shame really that there was no strong statement on Darfur,” he said.

The council finished its second session of the year divided between a resolution by the European Union critical of Sudan’s government and another supported by African and Muslim countries that went easy on Khartoum.

“You have to have a heart of stone, really, to not understand the situation of the women and children of Darfur,” Egeland said.

(AP/ST)