Sudan says ready to receive impartial UN rights mission

Feb 16, 2007 (PARIS) — Sudan’s president said Friday he is ready to accept a U.N. fact-finding mission on Darfur, although not some of its members proposed so far.President Omar al-Bashir alleged that some members of the U.N. team that had been stuck in Ethiopia, waiting for Sudanese visas, are biased.

“We are ready to accept a mission, but a mission that is independent and which will be honest,” he said on the sidelines of an African summit in Cannes on the French Riviera.

The 14-member U.N. human rights team, which was meant to visit Darfur to assess alleged atrocities, was stuck in Addis Ababa because Khartoum has failed to give them visas. Mission leader and Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams said Wednesday the team could not wait any longer and would carry out its assessment from outside the country and submit a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million been chased from their homes in Sudan’s remote western region since 2003, when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the central government.

Khartoum is accused of having responded with indiscriminate killings by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads — blamed for the worst atrocities in Darfur — in a conflict that the White House and others have labeled genocide. The government denies these charges.

Sudanese officials agreed in November on a three-phase U.N. package to help end the escalating violence that culminates with the deployment of a 22,000-strong African Union-U.N. “hybrid” force. But al-Bashir said last month that U.N. troops were not required in Darfur because the 7,000-strong African Union force on the ground could maintain order.

(AP)