US, Sudan trade accusations over Darfur
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, July 20 (Reuters) – The United States said on Tuesday it was “completely dissatisfied” with Sudan’s failure to stop Arab militia in Darfur and Khartoum accused Washington of spoiling peace talks the African Union was now trying to revive.
The United Nations says fighting between Arab Janjaweed militias and African rebels in Darfur, western Sudan, has killed some 30,000 people and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with 1 million people forced to flee their homes.
The United States accuses Sudan’s government of backing the Janjaweed in a campaign of ethnic cleansing marked by burning and looting of villages, murder and rape.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he told Sudanese leaders on Sunday of U.S. concerns over Darfur.
“I, the (U.S.) president (George W. Bush) and the international community remain completely dissatisfied with the security situation,” Powell told reporters.
“Rapes are still occurring. People do not feel safe leaving the camps to go out and forage for food. The situation remains very, very serious, and first and foremost the security has to be dealt with,” he added.
Powell’s blunt comments suggest Washington may be closer to pushing for a vote on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would place an immediate travel and arms ban on the militias and threatens to extend the sanctions to the Khartoum government.
PEACE TALKS STALLED
Sudan said the U.S. pressure had encouraged Darfur rebels to dig in over their demands for the Janjaweed to be disarmed ahead of full dialogue and walk out of African Union-backed peace talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Saturday.
“The attempts that are currently being undertaken in the Security Council and elsewhere sent a negative signal and were a factor in the failure of the political talks in Addis Ababa,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters.
“I informed … Colin Powell in a phone conversation we had today that these signals resulted in the other side coming to Addis unenthusiastic about reaching an agreement and waiting to see what happened to the government in the Security Council or elsewhere, therefore the consequences of this pressure have been negative in the end,” he added.
The African Union (AU) was to meet Darfur rebels in Geneva on Thursday in an effort to revive peace talks.
“Thursday’s talks are about the conditions under which rebels will participate in future talks,” said Andy Andrea, spokesman for the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue which is to host the talks.
He said the meeting would also be attended by officials from neighboring Chad, where many thousands of Sudanese have fled.
But there would be nobody from the Sudanese government, which has said that it is ready to talk about rebel demands but has rejected them as preconditions for talks. The AU says it will meet Sudan officials separately this week.
RAPE AND KILLING
The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups launched a revolt in February 2003 in the west of the oil-producing country after long conflict between African villagers and Arab nomads.
Those fleeing the conflict are threatened with hunger and disease in squalid camps inside Sudan and neighboring Chad.
“Of course the humanitarian situation is dire so the priority is to feed people before they die of famine,” Amnesty International researcher Benedicte Goderiaux told Reuters. “But human rights issues and violence against women … we want to try to keep these issues high up on the agenda.
“The U.S. are making strong declarations,” she said. “But what’s being proposed is a travel ban against the Janjaweed, an arms embargo on the Janjaweed. There should be an arms embargo on the Sudan government.”
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will determine if Sudan has lived up to its promises upon the return of Jan Pronk, his envoy for Darfur, who briefs the Security Council on Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch on Monday showed reporters translations of Sudanese government documents apparently showing clear support for the Janjaweed.
“We can no longer trust Khartoum to police itself when Khartoum is part of a large problem,” Kenneth Roth, director of the New York-based rights group told a news conference. “It’s like the fox guarding the chicken coop.”
(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Richard Waddington in Geneva and Arshad Mohammed in Washington)