World will keep pressure on Sudan for peace-Blair

By Andrew Cawthorne

KHARTOUM, Oct 6 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Sudan on Wednesday the international community would not rest until violence was ended in Darfur and a comprehensive peace deal was struck across the whole country.

Blair — the highest-level visitor from a Western government since the Darfur crisis erupted — said progress had been made in getting humanitarian aid to those who desperately needed it and the main problem now was imposing security.

“The international focus will not go away while this issue remains outstanding,” Blair said after talks with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum.

The United Nations says fighting in Darfur has created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, displacing 1.5 million people and killing up to 50,000.

Darfur rebels, who took up arms against Khartoum in early 2003, have accused the government of using Arab militia to loot and burn African villages in the region.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week said Sudan had made no progress in stopping attacks on civilians or punishing those behind atrocities.

Washington has called the Arab militia campaign genocide. But Blair, the first British leader to visit Sudan since independence from London in 1956, avoided that description.

Blair said Khartoum must rein in renegade troops and militia over whom the government has some control, negotiate a proper ceasefire with the Darfur rebel groups and abide by U.N. humanitarian demands.

Khartoum must also allow a significant expansion of African Union ceasefire monitors in Darfur and seek a comprehensive national peace agreement, including for an older, bloodier civil war in southern Sudan, he said.

“We want the government to commit to reach a comprehensive agreement, north and south, in Sudan by the end of the year,” Blair said. “That will have a positive impact in Darfur itself.”

Talks between the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Khartoum to end the southern civil war are due to resume in Kenya on Thursday.

Analysts say the Darfur crisis in the west has slowed progress towards a final peace deal to end the southern war that has killed 2 million.

AU TROOPS

Blair ruled out sending in British or European troops to Darfur, saying there was no appetite for such a move on the ground. But he promised logistical and financial help to deploy more soldiers from the African Union.

“We don’t need these forces in several months. We need them now,” he said.

The U.N. Security Council, which last month threatened Sudan with sanctions on its oil industry for atrocities in Darfur, on Tuesday focused on more AU troops rather than an embargo as a way to ease the crisis.

U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, whose government has led efforts to bring Khartoum to task over Darfur, said it was important to get as many African Union troops as possible into Darfur.

The African Union said last week Khartoum had agreed to the deployment of more than 3,000 troops to stop atrocities in Darfur. The AU has 300 troops on the ground in Darfur, tasked with monitoring a shaky truce between Khartoum and the rebels.

FOOD SUPPLY

Libya has invited Darfur rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement to a summit of the leaders of Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Libya and Nigeria later this month.

The summit will try to forge a lasting solution in Darfur and also focus on ensuring food supply for refugees.

The U.N. World Food Programme said on Wednesday the humanitarian crisis would last at least until the end of next year because so many Darfuris were still in refugee camps and unable to harvest this year or plant crops for 2005.

World Food Programme spokesman Greg Barrow urged donors to make up a shortfall in funds for emergency food aid for Darfur this year and to prepare further aid for next year.

He said the organisation had received $167 million of its $204 million budget for emergency food aid in Darfur this year. “We’re still not there in terms of overall funding,” he said.

Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the U.N. advanced mission in Sudan, said the total number of displaced people in Darfur could soon rise to one third of the area’s total of six million.

“If the situation continues like this we cannot keep up with this. We cannot keep up with the level of needs,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom)