Sudan blocking UN team probing Darfur atrocities: UN

GENEVA, April 13 (AFP) — The Sudanese government is preventing a UN human rights team from entering the country to probe reports of widespread atrocities in the western Darfur region, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The team has been in neighbouring Chad for the past week, interviewing Sudanese refugees who fled across the border to escape alleged ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

But talks with the government in Khartoum on access to strife-torn western Sudan are “in suspension,” UN human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said in Geneva.

“If we can’t get authorisation they might have to come back,” Diaz told journalists.

“Right now it looks as if it won’t be at this time, it might have to be at a later time,” he added.

Diaz told AFP there had been no statement by Sudanese authorities allowing the human rights team into the area following a ceasefire agreed with Darfur rebels last week, despite promises of safe passage for international aid.

“We haven’t had that kind of indication yet,” Diaz said.

Raising the possibility of a genocide similar to the one in Rwanda, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week urged the international community to consider decisive measures, including military action, if Khartoum fails to swiftly allow aid and human rights workers into the area.

Sudanese government-backed militia fighting a rebellion have been killing civilians from local ethnic groups and systematically forcing them out of their homes, according to human rights groups and UN aid workers who witnessed some attacks there.

A ceasefire was agreed last week between the warring sides. But on Monday the United States accused the Sudanese government and Khartoum-backed militias of continuing their attacks.

About 780,000 people have been displaced by the year-long conflict and some 100,000 have managed to flee to eastern Chad. But most of those still inside Sudan cannot be reached by foreign aid.