United States urges strong stand on Sudan from U.N. rights watchdog

GENEVA, April 23, 2004 (AP) — The U.S. Friday urged the top U.N. human rights body to take a strong stand in condemning violations in Sudan ‘s conflict-ravaged Darfur region.

“It is time that the international community stand united and denounce the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Sudan ,” wrote U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson in a letter to fellow members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Last-minute negotiations were under way in Geneva Friday morning, hours before the U.N. watchdog ended its annual six-week session, on whether to condemn Sudanese authorities over their record in Darfur. African and European governments on the 53-nation commission were working on a consensus statement which would express concern about the overall situation there but stop short of formal condemnation.

Williamson said this was wrongheaded. “Let’s not get caught up in the U.N. game of illusory consensus,” he told reporters earlier.

Thursday, Muslim countries protested the leaking of a U.N. report that accused Sudanese forces of raping non-Arab women and girls, bombing civilians and committing other atrocities in what may amount to “crimes against humanity.”

Williamson said focus on the leak was misplaced and concern should be about “the substance of the report.” He “guaranteed” U.S. officials had nothing to do with the leak.

The 13-page report was the latest expression of U.N. alarm about indications that thousands of civilians had been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes after a rebellion in Darfur, western Sudan .

The report, by a U.N. team of experts who recently visited Sudanese refugees in neighboring Chad, detailed atrocities against Africans allegedly committed by government forces and Arab militias. The Sudanese government has denied the allegations.

Acting U.N. human rights chief Bertrand Ramcharan said he received the report Monday from the U.N. team and had intended to make it public.

But he held off on releasing the report because of a last-minute invitation from the Sudanese government for the team to visit Darfur to verify the allegations.

Human rights groups said they were suspicious over the Sudanese government’s timing, saying the invitation was part of an attempt to keep the report from formal consideration by the U.N. rights commission before it adjourned its annual session.

The U.N. report, based on interviews with some of the estimated 110,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad earlier this month, said the government’s campaign to put down the rebellion has intensified since early last year.

Many witnesses in the report said the government was using aircraft to attack villages and towns and that government forces or militias followed up with land attacks.

It said the attacks were often to destroy crops and property, but that there were also frequent reports of killings.

It also said: “A policy of using rape and other serious forms of sexual violence as a weapon of war seems to exist.”

Rape was often committed by more than one man, sometimes in front of the victim’s family, it said.

This has led hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, it said. Besides the refugees already in Chad, 700,000 people were believed to be homeless in Darfur, the report said.

There has been little progress in peace talks between the Sudanese government and two rebel groups, meeting in Chad.

A 45-day cease-fire was signed April 8 to allow U.N. and humanitarian agencies access to the region, but so far the government has allowed only a handful of aid workers into the area and have banned journalists.