U.N. gets nod to probe abuses in Darfur

(Updates from paragraph 11 with U.S., Human Rights Watch)

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, April 20 (Reuters) – Sudan has granted permission for United Nations human rights investigators to visit the troubled region of Darfur amid charges of ethnic cleansing, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday.

A five-member team, led by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. human rights office in New York, spent 10 days in Chad this month interviewing Sudanese refugees.

But it returned to Geneva without visiting Darfur because Khartoum did not authorise it to visit the west of Africa’s largest country where rebels opened a new front in their long fight against the government in February last year.

“We have learned from the Sudanese authorities that they will allow the team to go to Khartoum and Darfur,” U.N. human rights spokesman Jose Luis Diaz told a news briefing in Geneva.

“We hope that they will go there in the next few days and be able to complete the work that they set out to do,” he added.

Arab militias, looting and burning African villages in the western Darfur area, have driven some 750,000 people from their homes. Human rights groups tell of executions, rapes and arbitrary arrests and accused government forces of complicity.

The U.N. says Darfur is scene of one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, with at least 110,000 forced to flee into neighbouring Chad to escape the militias.

FIGHTING CONTINUES

In an effort to protect refugees from cross-border raids, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday it had moved more than 31,000 Sudanese refugees further inland in eastern Chad.

A truce between Khartoum and the two rebel groups came into force on April 11, but aid workers say fighting continues, impeding access to those in urgent need.

The rebels say Khartoum first neglected Darfur, then armed the marauding Arab militias. Khartoum has branded the militias outlaws.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, winding up its annual six-week session in Geneva, on Wednesday is to debate a resolution put forward by the European Union on Sudan.

The EU draft text expresses concern at systematic militia attacks on civilians and inadequate government protection. The United States on Tuesday officially co-sponsored the resolution, a U.S. spokesman in Geneva said.

If the 53-member Commission approves the EU text, it would re-appoint a special investigator on Sudan. A year ago, the forum ended the mandate because of apparent moves towards peace.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said Darfur was a critical test of the Commission’s credibility.

(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom in Cairo)