Rebel group calls for international force deployment in Darfur

AMMAN, June 30 (AFP) — A rebel group in Sudan’s western Darfur region called Wednesday for an international force to be deployed in the strife-torn region, as US Secretary of State Colin Powell paid a brief visit to the area.

The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) also accused the Sudanese army and its allied militias of pursuing attacks on the population in Darfur where UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected on Thursday.

“We demand the deployment of international UN forces in Darfur,” Mohammed Hamed Ali, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Army which is linked to the SLM, told AFP.

He also called on Powell to “fly over Darfur in a helicopter to see the villages that have been torched and abandoned”.

A limited number of observers from the African Union are deployed in Darfur to monitor a precarious truce between government forces and the rebels.

“The presence of African observers did not stop the massacres in Rwanda and Burundi and we don’t wish to see what happened in those countries repeated here,” Ali said.

Ali also appealed to Powell “to put pressure on the (Sudanese) government for a political and just solution” to the crisis in Darfur. He said his movement had no contacts with the United States.

More than 10,000 people have died in Darfur and more than a million have been driven from their homes since the revolt against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum broke out among indigenous ethnic minorities in February 2003.