US slams Sudan bombings of Darfur rebel positions
Jan 5, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The United States condemned the Sudanese government for bombing rebel positions in the Darfur region in violation of a ceasefire agreement.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington was also “deeply concerned” by rebel militia attacks on humanitarian workers in Darfur and called on both sides in the four-year-old conflict to halt the violence.
The latest unrest came as efforts continued to deploy a robust UN-led peacekeeping force to Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been left homeless by fighting between ethnic African rebels and forces loyal to the Arab-led government in Khartoum.
McCormack said Sudanese government warplanes had bombed areas around Um Rai in northern Darfur over the past week, beginning immediately after a meeting there between rebel commanders and representatives of the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN).
The joint AU-UN team “had just met with Darfur rebel commanders in Um Rai on December 28 in order to urge them to abide by the ceasefire and participate fully in the Ceasefire Commission,” McCormack said.
“Immediately after the meeting, the Sudanese Armed Forces bombed the meeting site,” he said.
“These actions violate the Sudanese government’s pledge made in Addis Ababa on November 16, 2006 to facilitate the work of the African Union to achieve a strengthened ceasefire” in Darfur, he said.
Referring also to rebel attacks on humanitarian workers in the southern Darfur area of Gereida, McCormack called on “all parties to the Darfur conflict to refrain from violence, renew their commitment to the ceasefire” and take part in a meeting of the Darfur ceasefire commission scheduled for Monday.
The war in Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes in the vast western province took up arms to demand an equal share of national resources, prompting a heavy-handed crackdown from Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed proxy militia.
The Sudanese government signed a peace agreement in May with the main faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, led by Minni Minnawi, but others — including an SLA faction led by Abdel Wahid Nur, and the Justice and Equality Movement — refused to put their names to the pact.
The United Nations in July called on the government of President Omar al-Beshir to accept the deployment of 20,000 UN peacekeepers to halt the violence in Darfur.
Beshir rejected the resolution, but the UN, AU and Sudan reached a compromise agreement in November on deploying a hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force — a deal the Sudanese leader formally accepted in writing this week but which has yet to be implemented.
(AFP)