Sudan non-committal on disarming Darfur militias: minister
KHARTOUM, Oct 7 (AFP) — A Sudanese minister has insisted that talk of the swift disarmament of pro-government Arab militiamen in war-ravaged Darfur, as demanded by the UN Security Council, is only for “political consumption”.
Junior interior minister Ahmed Mohammed Harun told MPs Wednesday that weapons collection among the Arab tribes which his government armed to suppress an uprising by ethnic minority rebels would take place only as part of a wider peace settlement for the region, Khartoum dailies reported.
Disarmament of the feared militias would happen “only in the framework of a political agreement and social arrangements that make civilians feel there is a suitable atmosphere for coexistence (among the region’s warring ethnic groups),” Harun was quoted as saying.
The minister also called for African Union troops deployed in Darfur to have a mission that is as tightly circumscribed as possible.
“The government adheres to the principle of clearly determining the responsibilities of the African observation mission so as not to infringe on the role of the state in maintaining national sovereignty,” he said.
Harun stressed that maintaining security would “remain the responsibility of the army, the police and the security authorities,” adding that it had been agreed that the AU mission would have a new confidence-building role, the independent Al-Ayam daily reported.
The AU mission currently has just 300 troops in a region the size of France to monitor a widely broken ceasefire signed by the two sides in the Chadian capital Ndjamena in April.
Khartoum has agreed to the expansion of the force’s numbers, but has rejected calls for it to be upgraded into a full-blown peacekeeping mission.
Harun said there were now some 10,450 police deployed at 55 locations around Darfur. He said the number would soon be boosted to 12,000.
Junior humanitarian affairs minister Mohammed Yusuf Abdullah meanwhile told Al-Ayam that there were sufficient relief supplies already in the region to meet the needs of an estimated 1.4 million people displaced by the conflict until the end of the year.
He said the Sudanese authorities had contributed 55,000 tonnes of food and the World Food Programme 127,000 tonnes. A further 5,000 tonnes had been given by relief organizations and some 1.2 million dollars donated by Sudanese Muslims.
Despite independent reports of a continuing exodus of displaced people, Abdullah insisted that villagers were returning to their homes at a quickening pace.
He said in total some 224,000 displaced people had now gone home.
An estimated 50,000 people have died in the conflict, which the United Nations describes as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis.
Both Germany and the United States have said that the government’s bloody clampdown on minority villages suspected of supporting the rebels amounts to genocide.