Sudan says troubled Darfur region now stable

By Nima Elbagir

KHARTOUM, May 17 (Reuters) – Sudan said on Monday its western Darfur region was stable after the military quelled a revolt there and security would now be maintained by police.

Rebels who took up arms last year saying Khartoum neglected the poor region signed a ceasefire with the government in early April, but have since accused it of several violations.

“The situation in Darfur is stable and the threat indicator has been brought down from the colour red to the colour yellow,” said Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, state minister for internal affairs at a ceremony to see off more than a thousand police to Darfur.

Red is the highest of three security levels in Sudan. Yellow indicates relative stability that can be controlled internally by police, and green indicates no threat to civilians.

Aid officials say Arab militias have been killing, raping and looting the region since rebels launched the revolt in February 2003.

Sudan has denied its involvement but several human rights groups have said its army backs the militias in a conflict the United Nations says has triggered the worst humanitarian emergency facing the world.

The U.N. estimates that around 120,000 people have fled across the border to Chad and about one million are displaced within the arid region.

Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein told reporters the rebels were no longer a military force and had resorted to banditry.

“The rebellion movement in Darfur has returned to square one. It is now resorting to the looting of the possessions and wealth of civilians and highway banditry after they were broken in the last period,” he said.

Hussein accused Islamist Hassan al-Turabi’s opposition party the Popular Congress of links with one of the rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

“The Popular Congress is involved in the incidences in Darfur and the JEM is just another face of the Popular Congress,” he said.

JEM denies links with Turabi, the former ally of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who was arrested at the end of March for inciting tribal tensions. His party was also suspended.

Sudan’s government over the past few days has published advertisements in the local papers appealing for the public’s help in finding six Popular Congress party members who they say are on the run from the police.