US experts to report on Darfur killings next week
WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) – U.S. experts will report next week on whether they believe the killing of African villagers by Arab militias in Sudan’s Darfur region constitutes genocide, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday.
The experts will make their report as Washington seeks to build pressure on the Sudanese government to stop violence by the “Janjaweed” militias and to allow wider humanitarian access to the 1 million people they have displaced in western Sudan.
U.N. Security Council envoys do not expect any action until next week at the earliest on a U.S.-drafted sanctions resolution that would put an immediate travel and arms ban on the Janjaweed leaders. It would also threaten to extend the ban to Khartoum within a month if the government did not stop the killings, rape and uprooting of African villagers.
Powell said he did not believe the events in Darfur, which the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, now legally constitute genocide.
“It does not yet rise to that level,” he told the Charlie Rose television show, according to an official transcript.
“But I have got a team of experts in Darfur now and on the other side of the border in Chad talking to those who have been displaced and they will be reporting back to me next week as to whether the legal standard has been met or not met with respect to genocide,” he added.
U.S. officials have said marauding government-backed Janjaweed are conducting ethnic cleansing against Africans in Darfur, putting tens of thousands at risk of death from starvation or illness as the rainy season approaches.
Khartoum has pledged to disarm the Janjaweed, remove them from areas near refugee camps, provide a “credible” police force in the border areas between Sudan and Chad and remove obstacles to the delivery of aid by humanitarian workers.
“We have seen some limited movement with respect to the humanitarian aid,” Powell said. “More aid is getting in and …the Libyans have agreed to open a new route into Darfur from the north coming through Libya. That’s helpful.”
“We’re going to keep the pressure up. We’re not going to let the Sudanese government get away with just promises. We’re expecting action and we’ll be measuring them against the action they take, not the promises they make,” he added.