Germany urges UN arms embargo on Sudan

BERLIN, July 6 (AFP) — Germany has urged the United Nations to slap an arms embargo on the government of Sudan to force it to resolve the humanitarian crisis in its western region of Darfur.

“Any UN weapons embargo should concern all of Sudan,” Overseas Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul told Wednesday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The lives of a million people are at stake.”

At least 10,000 people have been killed, more than a million displaced and hundreds of thousands face starvation in Darfur amid a conflict pitting two rebel groups against Sudanese forces and their reviled militia allies.

The United States proposed last week a UN Security Council resolution for an arms and travel embargo on the Janjawid militia blamed for the bloodshed.

But the draft 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.

The government in Khartoum said over the weekend that it would take immediate steps to disarm the militias accused of sparking the crisis.

Fighting has recently intensified in southern Darfur, forcing 600 people to flee to the town of Ed Daein over the weekend.

Some 1.2 million people have left their homes since the conflict began last year and the UN refugee agency has said civilians are still being displaced.

Wieczorek-Zeul also said that a plan to send some 300 African peacekeepers there was inadequate for a region so vast.