US unimpressed with Sudan vow to boost police presence in Darfur
WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (AFP) — The United States said that Sudan’s pledge to boost the police presence in the strife-torn western region of Darfur was welcome but insufficient to meet the requirements of UN demands to immediately improve security there.
The State Department said Khartoum’s intent to increase the number of policemen in Darfur from 5,000 to 6,000 over the next few days and possibly deploy up to 12,000 officers would not in itself be sufficient to rein in pro-government Arab militias accused of ethnic cleansing.
“The provision of additional security forces may be a necessary step to provide security for the people of the area, but it’s only one of many steps they should be taking,” spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
“The government certainly has within its power the ability to take action to stop these militias, to arrest senior people, to stop air support, to stop government troop support, as well as to withdraw any forms of support and stop them from their activities,” he said.
The militias, known as Janjaweed, are blamed for much of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the United States and others have accused the Sudanese government of giving them free rein to quell a rebellion in the region by black African groups.
“The Sudanese government has a responsibility to act, and to act quickly, to stop the depredations of the Janjaweed militias,” Boucher said. “They have a responsibility to turn off what they originally turned on.”
Sudan’s Information Minister Zahawi Ibrahim Malik told AFP earlier Tuesday that the plans to boost the police force in Darfur were in line with an agreement between Khartoum and the United Nations aimed at securing the region.
Malik, however, denied that his government had any plans to reinforce the armed forces as suggested by some media reports.
Khartoum has come under massive diplomatic pressure to rein in the Janjaweed who are accused of terrorizing Darfur’s indigenous minorities since ethnic rebels launched an uprising early last year.
On Friday, the UN Security Council passed a US-sponsored resolution giving Sudan 30 days to act or face international action including the implicit threat of punitive sanctions.
The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 people have died in Darfur since the rebellion began and more than a million have fled their homes, 200,000 of them seeking refuge in neighboring Chad.
The United Nations has described the situation in the region as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands at risk of famine and disease in addition to the dangers posed by the Janjaweed.