U.N. expert concerned over 670,000 displaced by Sudan fighting

GENEVA, Dec 19, 2003 (AP) — A United Nations refugee expert said Friday that he was deeply concerned for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting in western Sudan.

Francis Deng, who hails from the African nation, said 670,000 people are in urgent need of assistance in the Darfur region after fleeing their homes. Some 70,000 more have crossed the border into neighboring Chad. Around 3,000 civilians have been killed.

The United Nations and aid groups have had to curtail aid programs in the region because of fighting between the Sudanese government and the Sudan Liberation Army. The rebels, who are demanding self-determination for Darfur, have been battling government troops and government-backed militias since February.

Deng said it was not only the international community’s responsibility to help. Sudanese authorities should do more, while the rebels also should give aid workers access to the needy.

“Sudan has for decades occupied the unenviable position of being the country worst affected by the crisis of internal displacement, with over four million persons forcibly uprooted” by decades of conflict between government forces and southern rebels, said Deng, a former Sudanese foreign minister who is U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative on the “internally displaced” – people who have fled their homes but remain within their country.

Chad brokered a shaky cease-fire in Darfur in September, but talks to end the conflict broke down Tuesday.

The Sudanese government also has held peace talks with rebels from another group, Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which has been fighting in the south since the 1980s.

Deng cited the “irony that this displacement (in Darfur) is occurring at a time when the government of Sudan has begun to gain international support for acknowledging and addressing the displacement crisis in the country and for the progress being made toward peace.”