Sudan tells UN rights chief ‘no genocide’ in Darfur

KHARTOUM, Sept 20 (AFP) — Sudan’s justice minister has told the top UN human rights official that there is no genocide in Darfur and insisted that ending the crisis in the region was Khartoum’s top priority, a newspaper reported Monday.

Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin’s comments to visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour came after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution threatening sanctions against Khartoum if it does not restore peace in Darfur, where some 50,000 people have died in 19 months of war.

Yassin told Arbour, who is on a week-long mission to Sudan, that Khartoum strongly denied reported practices of genocide and rape in Darfur, Al-Anbaa newspaper said.

Sudan has criticised the UN resolution as unfair but said it would neverthelesss abide by the demands of the international community.

But President Omar al-Beshir said the resolution was less severe than hoped for by Washington, which first publicly accused Khartoum and its allied militias of genocide, Al-Anbaa said.

The United States put pressure on fellow Security Council members ahead of Saturday’s vote “but failed, and the resolution came out less bad than it (Washington) had wanted,” Beshir said in a speech in Gezira State, central Sudan.

An estimated 50,000 people have died and 1.4 million been displaced in Darfur, where UN officials say pro-government Janjaweed militias have carried out a scorched-earth campaign and ethnic cleansing against the region’s black African population.

The war broke out in February 2003 when rebels rose up against Khartoum to demand an end to the marginalisation of their region, one of the poorest in Sudan.

Yassin said that ending the crisis was at “the top of the government priorities” and insisted that Khartoum was capable of solving it, Al-Anbaa said.

But it also quoted Yassin as accusing the Darfur rebels fighting the pro-government Arab militias of not being serious about reaching a settlement.

Three weeks of talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels in the Nigerian capital Abuja were suspended last week because of disagreements on key issues including disarmament, facilitating humanitarian access to the region and restoring security.

Resolution 1564, of which 11 out of the 15 members of the Security Council voted in favour, warns that the body “will envisage” sanctions against Sudan’s vital oil industry unless Khartoum makes good on its promise to protect the population of Darfur.

Beshir, in his first public reaction to the resolution, thanked “the true friends who stood up in the face of the unfair draft resolution”, singling out Algeria, China, Pakistan and Russia, which abstained in the vote.

“The government is prepared for all possibilities and does not fear the Security Council resolution and the United Nations, and it will not surrender or kneel down except to Allah,” Al-Anbaa quoted Beshir as saying.

But the president pledged his government would pursue its peace efforts despite last week’s failure of negotiations in Abuja that he blamed on the resolution.

However, the speaker of the Sudanese parliament cautioned the West on Sunday not to intervene in his country, warning that it risked opening the “gates of hell”.

Sudanese cabinet ministers also said the resolution had undermined the responsibility of African nations for resolving conflicts on the continent.