Red Cross says Sudanese government is preventing it from helping victims of western rebellion

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 06, 2004 (AP) — Sudan is keeping aid workers from helping victims of recent fighting between government forces and rebels, Red Cross officials said Saturday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and others have repeatedly protested their lack of access to the western region of Darfur, where aid agencies estimate the fighting has killed hundreds of people and forced more than 600,000 to flee.

“We believe there is a very serious crisis,” said Jacques De Maio, who heads Red Cross operations for the Horn of Africa. But “we are not in position to say exactly what’s happened precisely because we are not able to go there.”

Both the United Nations and London-based Amnesty International have accused government forces of targeting civilians in Darfur. Amnesty has said the rebels were also involved in attacks on civilians.

Since November, Red Cross workers have been limited to visiting three major towns in Darfur and a few “humanitarian corridors,” said Dominik Stillhart, who runs the Sudan operation for the Red Cross. But they have not been permitted to go to the villages and camps where the displaced have sought refuge, he said.

Access to Darfur improved in February, but “it is still not adequate in terms of the scope of the problem,” Stillhart said.

This week, De Maio and ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger met with senior Sudanese officials in Khartoum to discuss the problem.

De Maio refused to give details of the meetings, saying only that Kellenberger shared his concerns with Sudanese officials, who “acknowledged the proposals (and) responded to them.”

“What we want now is to see that the room for these meaningful humanitarian deployments be concretely implemented,” he said.

Darfur’s two rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, began their insurgency in February 2003 and say they are seeking a share of power and wealth in Africa’s largest country.

Fighting has intensified as peace talks between the government and southern rebels fighting a 21-year civil war have inched toward a conclusion. Those talks, staged in Kenya, resumed last month.