Sudan says it’s confident it will meet U.N. demands

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Sudan is confident it will prove to the U.N. Security Council it has made progress to protect more than a million people who have fled fighting in Darfur, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Thursday.

He also said security in camps for the displaced people was now good, but the surrounding areas needed work and Khartoum was deploying police to improve this.

A spokeswoman for U.N. envoy Jan Pronk said the government appeared to be taking its commitments seriously but the United Nations still wanted to see better security for victims of what it calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Under a July 30 Security Council resolution, Sudan was given a month to prove it was making progress towards disarming marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed and improve security in the remote western region, or face possible sanctions.

The U.N. estimates that up to 50,000 people have died in Darfur since two rebel groups took up arms there last year. Khartoum denies rebel charges of arming the Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Ismail told reporters: “I am confident (about the Security Council) because I think I’m doing the right things and I’m going to continue doing them. That’s why I think any credible evaluation will support me rather than put obstacles in front of me.”

Pronk will report on progress in Darfur to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on August 30 after senior U.N. officials visit the area next week to assess security in the camps.

“The government did some things on the ground…but we still have to see a substantial, verifiable, sustainable improvement of the security situation,” Pronk’s spokeswoman, Radhia Achouria, told BBC radio.

“The government … are expected to give us a list of Janjaweed militia which are supposed to be under the influence of the government … but we still have to see that,” she added.

CALL FOR INTERVENTION

The rebels and the Islamic government in Khartoum signed a ceasefire in April but both sides have since accused the other of violations.

A leader of one of the rebel groups, Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur of the Sudan Liberation Movement, appealed to the United States, Britain and the European Union on Thursday for military intervention.

He said in a statement that the situation in Darfur was intolerable because of epidemics among the displaced.

African Union ceasefire observers and monitors have been deployed in Darfur with 150 more Nigerian troops expected to arrive on Aug. 25.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on Arab countries to advertise a campaign to collect contributions for Darfur from the public, Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported on Thursday.

MENA qouted Moussa as saying that two accounts, one in Egyptian pounds and the other in dollars, had been opened to collect the contributions. (Additional reporting Amil Khan in Cairo)