US accuses Sudan’s government of ethnic cleansing, seeks UN action
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON, May 21, 2004 (AP) — The Bush administration will ask the United Nations next week to deal with what the United States considers an increasingly troubling situation in western Sudan, a senior State Department official said Friday.
Hundreds of thousands of people will die this summer unless the Sudanese government stops the violence in the Darfur region, admits outside inspectors and lets relief supplies into the area, the official said.
More than a year of fighting in the sprawling region along the border with Chad has displaced almost 1 million people and led to a major humanitarian crisis.
The Bush administration plans to accelerate pressure on President Omar el-Bashir’s government, but European and Arab governments are not inclined to support that strategy, the official said in a briefing under rules that barred identifying him by name.
In Khartoum, the northeast African country’s capital, the government said Friday it has eased restrictions on humanitarian groups who want help in Darfur.
A joint statement by the Foreign and Humanitarian Affairs ministries specified that those working with the United Nations, donor countries, the International Committee of the Red Cross and nongovernmental organizations who apply to Sudanese diplomatic missions would get entry visas within 48 hours.
U.N. diplomats have said privately that many relief workers were not being given visas to enter Sudan.
The U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, and members of human rights groups have denounced el-Bashir’s government for ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The U.S. official said Friday that Washington likewise considers the violence ethnic cleansing in the vast region of desert and savanna grasslands.
El-Bashir took a group of Western diplomats and U.N. officials to Darfur on Wednesday to show that calm was returning since a cease-fire was reached last month.
The president, a Sudanese army lieutenant general, was upbeat and denied claims of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of people, some mounted on horses and camels, others on foot, gathered in the main square and along the road to the airport.
At Nyala’s main square, horsemen from both Arab and African tribes paraded before the presidential podium in a display meant to display tribal harmony.
The State Department official who spoke Friday in Washington was skeptical about the promise to ease restrictions on travel by relief groups this weekend.
The department noted the announcement in Khartoum government had promised it would not restrict aircraft carrying humanitarian relief supplies for Darfur refugees, and would grant visas to aid workers within 48 hours.
“We’ve been urging the government of Sudan to take these steps, and they are long overdue,” spokesman Richard Boucher said.
“We’re reserving judgment until we see this new policy implemented,” he said.
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Annan “trusts that these measures will be implemented immediately, so that more than 1 million people affected by the crisis in Darfur can receive the aid they so urgently need.”
Thousands of people are believed to have died since early 2003 when rebels began fighting for autonomy and greater state aid. The conflict has displaced about 900,000 refugees in Darfur’s three states, and an additional 100,000 have fled into Chad.
The State Department official said that while the rebels, like the government, were predominantly Muslims, the rebellion was a local tribal response to Arabization of Sudan.
The Islamic government in Khartoum has been fighting Christians and animists in the southern Sudan for more than two decades, a war in which at least 2 million people are estimated to have died.
Next Wednesday, the official said, the United States would press the U.N. Security Council to take up the situation in Darfur with the hope that the council’s president would issue a statement demanding that el-Bashir’s government stop the violence.
If this does not work, the official said, the United States would move to reimpose international sanctions on Sudan, which were lifted four years ago. The United States maintains separate sanctions against Sudan, one of seven countries the State Department considers sponsors of terrorism.
Among restrictions are U.S. bans on weapons shipments and on economic help to Sudan from international lending institutions.