Sudan rejects human rights monitoring

KHARTOUM, Sudan, March 30, 2004 (UPI) — Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir Tuesday rejected a draft proposal by the European Union requesting international monitoring of human rights in Sudan.

El-Bashir was quoted by his foreign minister Mustafa Ismail as saying “he opposed placing Sudan under international supervision to verify the state of human rights” in the country torn by decades of civil war between the mainly-Muslim north and the south, which is largely Christian and Animist.

The EU is planning to submit the draft proposal to the U.N. Commission for Human Rights, which is meeting in Geneva.

Ismail said he briefed el-Bashir on the measures undertaken by his ministry to confront the EU proposal. He did not elaborate.