UN Darfur envoy issues new warning to Sudan ahead of deadline
KHARTOUM, Aug 26 (AFP) — The situation in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur “has not changed much” and the United Nations wants action not words, UN envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk was quoted as saying in the Sudanese press.
“In Khartoum, we hear a lot of fine words, but the situation in Darfur has not changed much,” Pronk said. “The UN doesn’t want promises, but their fulfilment.”
Sudan has until the end of the month to show that it has restored order and security in Darfur, where a humanitarian catastrophe has resulted from ethnic conflict, or face action by the UN.
But in the Nigerian capital Abuja, Khartoum’s chief negotiator said Thursday Sudan would ignore the deadline to end attacks by government-allied Arab militias but would instead resolve the crisis through African Union peace talks.
Asked whether Sudan would seek to meet the terms of the UN ultimatum, which expires on August 30, Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa said: “Not at all. It’s never crossed our minds or our hearts.”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheith held talks in Khartoum on Wednesday with his Sudanese counterpart Mustafa Osman Ismail and concluded: “The Sudanese are optimistic but they are waiting prudently for a relaxation” in the tension in Darfur.
Abul Gheith reiterated Egypt’s call to the international community to give Sudan “more time” to respond to the demands to disarm the Janjaweed militia and assure the security of the displaced people in Darfur.
Pronk reminded Sudan that it had to fulfil four conditions by the end of the month to avert UN sanctions:
– Disarming and confining the pro-government militias and providing lists of those guilty of crimes in Darfur.
– Keeping regular soldiers, apart from police, away from the camps for displaced persons in the region.
– No hindrance to the work of humanitarian organisations operating in the camps.
– Continuing negotiations with the Darfur rebels for a political solution to the crisis “whatever the difficulties” and “whatever the conditions”.
Pronk, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s representative in Sudan, denied official claims that a list of 30 Janjaweed and police guilty of crimes, including rape, in Darfur had been handed to the UN.
“The Janjaweed are still the most dangerous and the biggest armed group in Darfur,” Pronk said, urging Khartoum to “make the most of the few remaining days before the (UN) ultimatum expires to restore security” in the region.
“We are not calling for the restoration of security throughout the three states of Darfur in the time that is left, but there are precise zones in which security must be restored,” he said.
Sudan has presented the UN with a list of 11 zones which it has undertaken to make secure before the end of the month and where those people thrown off their land by the Janjaweed can take refuge.
Meanwile, in the North Darfur State capital of El-Fashir, four Egyptian officers have joined the 120 or so African Union observers in the region to monitor the April 8 ceasefire agreed between the government and the two rebel factions, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army.
The UN estimates that up to 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur since mainly black African rebels rose up in February 2003 against the Khartoum government’s policies in Darfur.
The government responded through the proxy militia, widely blamed for atrocities against civilians that forced some 1.2 million people to flee their homes to camps in Darfur itself, and up to 200,000 more to equally impoverished eastern Chad, according to the United Nations.