Khartoum media says UN chief pleased with Darfur efforts

KHARTOUM, Aug 28 (AFP) — Khartoum’s official media reported that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had congratulated President Omar al-Beshir on his government’s efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur as a Security Council deadline for action expired.

In Saturday night’s eve-of-deadline telephone call to Beshir, Annan voiced his “appreciation for Sudan’s efforts to resolve the crisis,” the state SUNA news agency said.

Annan “described as positive the reports he had received on the subject from UN representatives in the (three Darfur) states and expressed hope that they would continue,” the news agency said.

Beshir replied that his government was “striving to return Darfur to normal and added that a large proportion of the displaced were currently in the process of going back to their homes on a voluntary basis to lead a normal life in their villages.”

Annan is due to report to the Security Council Monday on Khartoum’s compliance with the 30-day deadline it issued on June 30.

A draft circulated to the government and the two ethnic minority rebel groups and seen by AFP on the sidelines of peace talks in the Nigerian capital was largely negative.

“General insecurity persists with continuing violence by various armed groups, banditry and lawlessness. There are clear indications that Khartoum security agents are systematically harassing and intimidating the internally displaced persons in a scheme aimed at forcing them out of camps,” it said.

“At nearly every IDP location in the area, Arab militias continue to patrol … reports of rape, beatings, disapperances, and looting continue.”

The report said in all nearly 1.5 million ethnic minority villagers had fled their homes or seen their livelihoods destroyed during the government’s bloody clampdown on the rebels, which has seen state-sponsored Arab militias unleashed on their presumed supporters.