Sudan says rejects U.N. sanction threat

KHARTOUM, July 30 (Reuters) – The Sudanese government rejected a Security Council resolution passed Friday threatening to impose sanctions on Khartoum in 30 days if it does not prosecute and disarm militias in the Darfur region.

Sudan announces its rejection of the Security Council’s misguided resolution,” Information Minister Al-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik said in a statement.

The United Nations says the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where rebels took up arms against Khartoum in early 2003.

The rebels accuse Khartoum of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed. The U.S. Congress says the militias are committing genocide against non-Arabs in Darfur where at least 30,000 civilians have been killed.

“Sudan expresses its deep regret that the issue of Darfur should reach, with this speed, the Security Council, and that it be snatched from its regional context,” Malik said.

He said the Security Council had intentionally ignored efforts by Khartoum, the African Union and the Arab League to resolve the crisis.

“Sudan is regretful that the Security Council … did not address itself to the rebel militias in Darfur whose military operations continue to obstruct humanitarian aid,” he added.

Some one million Darfur villagers have been driven into barren camps and two million need food and medicine. Thousands of women have been raped.

The U.S.-drafted resolution places an immediate weapons embargo on all armed groups in Darfur. But Sudan’s security forces, accused of protecting the Janjaweed, are excluded from the arms ban.

The Security Council voted 13-0 for the resolution, with abstentions from China and Pakistan.

“The Government of Sudan has left us no choice,” said U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, who ushered it through.

“It has done the unthinkable. It has fostered an armed attack on its own civilian population. It has created a humanitarian disaster.”