Annan visits Sudan to press government on Darfur
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, June 17 (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan plans to visit Sudan soon to press Khartoum to do more to help the people of its Darfur region caught up in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, he said on Thursday.
“I think it is the responsibility of the government to protect the population, and we need to encourage it and must insist it does it,” Annan told reporters at U.N. headquarters.
“And of course, if it is not able to protect them, the international community may have to assist the Sudanese government to do that, and the Sudanese government should be willing to accept that assistance,” he said.
In a speech to mark the tenth anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Annan warned of the risk of genocide in Darfur and said a military force may be needed to help gain access to those affected by the conflict.
He expects to go to Sudan in the next few weeks to assess the humanitarian and security situation in the Darfur region of western Sudan, but no date has yet been set, U.N. aides said.
Fighting in Darfur has driven more than one million people from their homes to other parts of Sudan and forced more than 150,000 to flee to neighboring Chad, and some 2 million in the region need outside aid, according to U.N. figures.
Rebels launched a revolt in Darfur last year, accusing the government of the oil-rich northeast African nation of neglect and of arming Arab units known as Janjaweed militias who loot and burn ethnic African villages. Khartoum denies the charges.
Some U.N. officials accuse the government of turning a blind eye to a scorched-earth campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur and failing to fulfill pledges to disarm the militias and ensure aid workers have access to those in need.
Annan said he had not yet seen evidence to justify calling the situation ethnic cleansing or genocide, but he believed Khartoum could do more to rein in the Janjaweed militias.
“There is a massive violation of international humanitarian law, but I am not ready to describe it as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet,” he said.
Sudanese officials he met with this week in Brazil “deny any complicity and indicated they are going to do the best they can to bring the situation under control,” he said. “From all accounts, they can do something about the Janjaweed.”
(Additional reporting by Nima Elbagir in Khartoum)