US rights official visits Sudan

March 10, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights has met with a senior Sudan official on Saturday, who explained why a UN rights delegation was not allowed to visit.

Othman Mohammed Taha, the representative of the official Consultative Council for Human Rights, told Barry Lowenkron “the reasons for Sudan’s rejection of the delegation from the human rights council,” according to the SUNA press agency.

The two officials also discussed the human rights situation in the western region of Darfur where a civil war has claimed 200,000 lives and displaced at least 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.

In mid-February, Sudan refused to grant visas to a delegation from the UN Human rights Council, stating that one of its members, Bertrand Ramcharan, had a hostile attitude because he referred to the situation in Darfur as genocide.

The decision to send the mission was made in December 2006 over the objections of Khartoum during heated discussions in an extraordinary session of the rights committee.

Lowenkron will also visit Darfur in the course of his trip, which comes on the heels of a visit by Andrew Natsios, the US envoy to Sudan.

Lowenkron will also be visiting the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to meet with members of the African Union, which has a peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The visit was announced on Tuesday, the same day the US State Department released its annual human rights report, which listed Sudan as a state guilty of genocide.

(AFP)