Sudan govt to cut numbers of paramilitary forces operating in Darfur
By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Writer
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Aug 22, 2004 (AP) — In a goodwill gesture on the eve of peace talks in Nigeria, Sudan’s government said Sunday it will cut the number of paramilitary forces operating in Darfur by 30 percent in a bid to ease tensions in the troubled region, where an 18-month conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 people.
United Nations spokesperson Radhia Achouri welcomed the move, saying the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces have been blamed for committing various acts of violence against African tribespeople in west Sudan’s three Darfur states.
“It is a positive step because these forces are one of the reasons of concern for us because they are armed and have been involved in the (violent) actions we want to stop,” Achouri told The Associated Press in Egypt in a telephone interview from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Sudan’s state minister for interior affairs, Ahmed Mohamed Haroon, said the 30 percent reduction in the volunteer force’s numbers was ordered to build confidence ahead of African Union-sponsored peace talks starting in Nigeria Monday between government officials and two African rebel groups, and to help implement a rarely heeded April 8 cease-fire agreement.
It is unclear how many paramilitary forces operate in Darfur, but they are believed to outnumber the more than 60,000 army and police personnel stationed throughout the region. Haroon said further reductions will occur if rebel forces adhere to the cease-fire.
“We are not saying the security threats are now nil, but we are saying that the level of threat has decreased,” Haroon told reporters in Khartoum. “We will reduce the state of alert more (if) the other side shows cooperation.”
The announcement came on the same day that a Sudanese government delegation left for Nigeria ahead of Monday’s peace talks. The delegation is headed by Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad, a Cabinet minister and chief of the ruling National Congress party’s political department.
Ahmad led the government delegation to previous peace talks that broke down July 17 in Ethiopia when the rebels walked out accusing the government of ignoring existing peace agreements. Sudan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, had blamed the failure on what he called the “impossible and changing conditions” of the rebels.
The rebel Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement have said they will send high level delegations to the talks to end the conflict, which the United Nations says has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The groups launched their rebellion in February 2003 after years of low-level clashes over scarce resources by ethnic African farmers and ethnic Arab herders in the region.
Drawn from African tribes, the rebels accused a government seen as controlled by Sudan’s Arab elite of marginalizing Darfur. Human rights groups, the U.S. Congress and U.N. officials accuse the government of responding to the rebellion by backing a scorched earth policy carried out by Arab militias on camel back _ known as the Janjaweed.
The government denies backing the Janjaweed and has been working with U.N. officials to comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution giving it until Aug. 30 to disarm militiamen or face possible economic and diplomatic sanctions.
Achouri, the U.N. Mission in Sudan spokesperson, said the decision to reduce the paramilitary force numbers was among a series of measures the government had agreed to undertake under the Darfur Plan of Action, a framework drawn up to demonstrate to the Security Council that Khartoum is moving to end the conflict.
The Popular Defense Forces, created in the early 1990s to provide assistance to the Sudanese army, are composed mainly of volunteers who work under the command and supervision of the army. They were crucial in many past confrontations the Sudanese army had with the southern rebels, the Sudan People Liberation Army.
“The plan to disarm the PDF is part of a government program to disarm these troops and we will continue to do it,” Ismail told reporters during Sunday’s announcement. The official Sudan Media Center said another government delegation will leave Tuesday for talks in Egypt with the National Democratic Alliance, an umbrella of rebel groups involved in a separate conflict in Sudan’s south.