FACTBOX-What’s happening in western Sudan?

KHARTOUM, June 30 (Reuters) – The United States and the United Nations turned their attention on Wednesday to the conflict in western Sudan with visits by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Here are the main facts about the conflict:

– Human rights organisations say Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, with the connivance of the Sudanese army, are driving farmers from their land in a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing, verging on genocide. The Sudanese government says the Janjaweed are outlaws and it is determined to disarm them.

– The Janjweed, mounted on camels and horses, have set fire to villages, killed many of the men and raped women and girls.

– More than one million Muslim Darfuris, mainly subsistence farmers from a wide variety of ethnic groups for whom Arabic is a second language, have fled their homes, creating what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

– Most of them have taken refuge in camps in Darfur but more than 150,000 of them have crossed into Chad as refugees.

– Arab nomads have been encroaching on farming communities in Darfur for many years and the Janjaweed campaign is an extension of that migration, accelerated by the government’s ideological commitment to Arabisation in the 1990s.

– In February 2003, two rebel groups in Darfur took up arms against the government, arguing Khartoum had neglected the vast region and was failing the protect the people from the militias.

– The prospect of peace in a separate conflict in the south of Sudan may have emboldened the rebels to believe they could win a better deal by resorting to arms, analysts say.

– The Sudanese government has restricted humanitarian access to Darfur and relief organisations now say they are racing against time to get supplies in place before the rainy season.

– Powell and Annan are threatening U.N. Security Council action against the Sudanese government if it does not stop the Janjaweed and allow free access for relief organisations.