Sanctions against Sudan within “short time”, U.S. says

NEW YORK, July 02, 2004 (dpa) — U.N. Security Council sanctions against Sudan would be adopted within “days” or “weeks” if the Khartoum government fails to take steps to end the humanitarian crisis in the western region of Darfur, the administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development said Friday.

Andrew Natsios, who accompanied U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his visit to Sudan this week, held closed-door discussion with the council’s 15 ambassadors in New York, saying that there was support for the sanctions.

“I got the sense that if the Sudanese government does not implement its promises to Secretary Powell, there would be interest in supporting (the sanctions),” Natsios said. “Only time will tell.”

“We will not be waiting for a long time, we are not talking about months, we are talking about days and weeks,” he said, adding, “It’s a short period of time.”

Natsios said the humanitarian crisis in Darfur has become the “worst in the world.”

Powell has demanded free access for relief workers to refugee camps and displaced people, import of relief commodities for the refugees and an end to taxes collected by Khartoum-backed militias from the refugees.

USAID has already spent 117 million dollars in Darfur and planned to spend another 150 million dollars from now till the end of 2005, he said. The U.S. government became involved in assisting the Sudanese when the conflict erupted last year.

The U.S. has submitted a resolution calling on the U.N. council to impose an arms embargo and travel ban on the Arab-led militia group known as Janjaweed, which is supported by Khartoum to crush African rebels in Darfur.

Natsios said a travel ban would hurt Janjaweed leaders, who he said are army generals who are “prosperous and rich.”

“They are not on horseback, that’s an illusion,” he said. “There are senior commanders who in fact have wealth and power and travel outside the country,and such a ban would have an affect on them. And they are the people who are causing the trouble.”

Natsios said refugee camps in Darfur have “elevated” child mortality and the refugees need everything from the outside. He said the camps have become “concentration camps” from which the refugees cannot go out because they would be killed or raped by the militias.

“They are entirely depending on us, if we do not have access to them, they are going to die,” he said.

Romanian Ambassador Mihnea Motoc, president of the U.N. Security Council for July, said the resolution was being discussed and that the council was waiting for more information from Sudan before taking action on the resolution submitted by the United States.

“The situation in Sudan is on everyone’s mind these days,” Motoc said.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said a significant number of children are directly affected by the conflict and were becoming a generation of “child survivors” as victims and witnesses of the violence there.

UNICEF’s director of emergency operations, Dan Toole, said he recently interviewed dozens of children in camps in Darfur and in neighbouring Chad who had fled violence and witnessed murders and rapes parents, siblings and neighbours.

“I spoke with scores of children, who simply tell what they have seen,” Toole said a statement made available in New York. “Infants shot in front of them, parents gunned down in fields, mothers raped, houses burned, animals killed and people being forced to run for their lives with nothing.”

“At least half a million children are among those who fled, which gives us a hint at the scale of the disaster for children,” he said.

Toole said comprehensive data on the war impact on children was difficult to collect at this stage, but he said there was enough anecdotal evidence coming from children to indicate a broad impact on their lives.

The U.N. said the conflict in Darfur has displaced more than a million people and sent tens of thousands fleeing into Chad. It blames the Islamic-led government in Khartoum for the humanitarian crisis and human rights violations in Darfur.

The Khartoum-backed Arab militia forces entered the region to fight with African ethnic rebel groups that have been active for more than a year.

In an obvious effort to conceal dire conditions in a refugee camp, Sudanese authorities suddenly moved away the estimated 1,000 refugees in a camp in Meshtel before U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was to visit the site on Thursday.

The camp in Meshtel was empty except for some donkeys when Annan arrived there, the New York Times reported, quoting Annan as asking, “Where are the people?”

The Times said Al Noor Muhammad Ibrahim, Sudan’s minister of social affairs, confirmed that the camp no longer existed and he =suggested that Annan visit another camp with better conditions, which was visited by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday.

“It’s not because the secretary-general of the U.N. is here that we moved them,” Ibrahim was quoted as saying. He said the conditions at the camp were so grim that it had to be closed.

“We did not like seeing people living like that,” he said.