Sudan announces steps to ease Darfur conflict, after Powell warning
KHARTOUM, June 30 (AFP) — Sudan announced steps to ease the situation in the strife-torn Darfur region, as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan were in the country to press for action.
Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail told a press conference here with Powell, who had delivered a stern warning to Khartoum to ease the humanitarian crisis, that the government would tackle the problem with three steps.
It would send more government forces to provide security, ease restrictions on humanitarian groups and speed up negotiations with rebel groups.
“We will do our best to bring more police and more armed forces to that area. We will combat any militia or Janjawid to protect civilians,” he said, referring to pro-government Arab militias blamed for a wave of killings of indigenous groups in Darfur since rebels rose up in February 2003.
“We’re going to enhance the speed of political negotiations. Hopefully in a very short time we will reach agreement with the rebels,” he said.
Khartoum, which has been accused of hampering essential humanitarian access to the region, would also ease restrictions on international aid groups, Ismail added.
In a meeting with Ismail and Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir on Tuesday, Powell had outlined three main demands that were reflected in Ismail’s announcement.
“Unless we see more moves soon in all these areas, it may be necessary for the international community to begin considering other actions, to include (UN) Security Council action,” he told reporters after meeting Beshir.
Powell, who made a whirlwind visit to Darfur and a refugee camp there, said he was pleased by the announcement but wanted to see action on the ground.
“I have made it clear to the minister that the international community is going to remain seized with this problem,” he said, cautioning that UN sanctions “will always be an option” if the government failed to deliver.
Indeed, the United States proposed a UN Security Council resolution that would slap an arms and travel embargo on the Janjawid militia blamed for the bloodshed in Darfur.
But the draft, obtained by AFP, does not spell out sanctions against the Sudanese government, which is said to have supported the militia in creating what UN officials call the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today.
Instead, it leaves the way open for the council, within 30 days of approving the measure, to decide whether sanctions should be placed on “any other individuals or groups responsible for the commission of atrocities in Darfur.”
Earlier, an official accompanying Powell had accused Sudan of being “in denial” over the Darfur situation.
Referring to the secretary’s talks with Ismail on Tuesday evening, he said: “They (Sudanese government officials) are in a state of denial.”
The government was using “selective statements” from UN and aid agency reports to make their case, but Powell was not convinced, he added.
“We know what’s going on.
In Darfur, Powell met with members of an African Union team monitoring the shaky truce signed in April. He also met the governor of North Darfur state, Osman Yusuf Kibir.
He later walked through the Abu Shouk camp, a sprawling tent city on the outskirts of the state capital of El-Feshir which shelters some 40,000 people.
“We are anxious to see an end to militarism out here,” Powell said. “We are anxious to see the Janjawid brought under control and disarmed so people can leave the camps in safety and go back to their villages.”
More than 10,000 people have died in Darfur and more than a million driven from their homes since the revolt against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum broke out among indigenous ethnic minorities.
Many of the displaced persons live in dire conditions, afraid to venture outside the camps or return home for fear they will be killed by the Janjawid.
But on the plane back to Khartoum, Powell appeared to come out against the idea of an international peacekeeping force for Darfur, which is roughly the size of France.
“I cannot see in my mind where a peacekeeping force with the ability to sustain itself over such a large area would come from. I believe the solution has to rest with the government doing what is right” and providing security, he said.
A Darfur rebel group accused the Sudanese army and its allied militias of pursuing attacks in Darfur despite a ceasefire.
“We demand the deployment of international UN forces in Darfur,” Mohammed Hamed Ali, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Army told AFP in Cairo.
The UN chief, meanwhile, arrived in Khartoum on Wednesday to start a mission focused on Darfur.
Annan, who has already urged Sudan to act on the crisis, was to meet with Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha on Wednesday evening, along with other officials, including Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamed, and Interior Minister General Ibrahim Mohammed Hussein.
On Thursday, he is to meet with visit a camp for displaced people in Darfur and also have a meeting with Beshir before traveling on to neighbouring Chad, which has given shelter to some 100,000 refugees.
Powell, who left Sudan Wednesday night, had brief talks with Annan at the Khartoum airport, according to an AFP correspondent there.
Some 15 students from Darfur were injured, at least three seriously, in clashes with police in Khartoum Wednesday when around 400 of them tried to deliver a statement to Annan at the UN offices there, a student spokesman said.
Another 48 students were arrested in the incident, as police launched tear gas grenades and opened fire on the students, said Tahamid Omar Jibril, secretary general of the student union at the University of Khartoum. There was no official confirmation of the incident.