Sudan blocks UN team probing Darfur atrocities, accused of violating truce
GENEVA, April 13 (AFP) — Sudan was preventing a UN team from entering the country to probe alleged atrocities by government-backed militias, as the United States accused Khartoum of violating a ceasefire aimed at ending a war that has claimed 10,000 lives.
The UN human rights team has been in neighbouring Chad for the past week, interviewing Sudanese refugees who fled across the border to escape alleged ethnic cleansing by Arab militia in the western Darfur region.
But Sudanese authorities, despite promises of safe passage for international aid, were not allowing the investigators to cross into the strife-torn area itself following a ceasefire agreed with Darfur rebels last week, UN human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said in Geneva.
“We haven’t had that kind of indication yet,” he said.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week urged the international community to consider decisive measures, including military action, if oil-rich Sudan fails to swiftly allow aid and human rights workers into the area.
The year-old Darfur war is described by the UN as the world’s worst current humanitarian disaster. It has displaced about 670,000 people inside Sudan since it erupted in February last year and forced about 100,000 others to flee to neighbouring Chad.
The non-Arab rebels, mainly drawn from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa ethnic minorities in the largely desert region, complain of marginalisation by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
They also fear the exclusion of their region from a power and wealth-sharing accord in the final stages of negotiation between Khartoum and separatist rebels who have been at war in the mainly Christian south.
A ceasefire was agreed last week between Darfur’s warring sides.
But on Monday the United States accused the Sudanese government and Khartoum-backed militias of continuing their attacks.
“Early reporting indicates some diminution in the fighting following the ceasefire going into effect, but we do still have reports that the government-supported Arab militias are attacking parts of western and southern Darfur,” it said.
“There are also reports of continuing aerial bombardment, such as at Anka, northwest of Khartoum, this morning,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
But the US assessment was at odds with accounts from both Khartoum, which pledged it was upholding the truce, and the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which said the ceasefire was being respected.
On Tuesday Chadian mediators who brokered the ceasefire, which was due to come into effect Sunday, also insisted the truce was holding.
The interim deal struck in the Chadian capital Ndjamena called for a renewable 45-day truce, free access for humanitarian aid, the release of prisoners and the disarmament by Khartoum of the armed militias fighting alongside government troops in Darfur.
New talks were set for April 20 in Ndjamena to discuss political issues and seek a definitive settlement.
The European Union’s top military official, Gustav Hagglund, said Tuesday that EU-led forces could intervene if a solution is not quickly found to end unrest Darfur.
But a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana later insisted that there were no concrete plans for such an intervention.
The 21-year-old conflict in southern Sudan, which has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced four million, also pitted non-Arab rebels against the Khartoum government.
The government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) are currently finalising a peace deal in talks in Kenya.
The two sides have already struck a deal to grant the mainly Christian and animist south the right to a referendum after a six-year transition period, and an agreement on a 50-50 split of the country’s wealth — particularly revenues from oil.