Britain calls on both sides in Darfur conflict to lay down arms
By ED JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
LONDON, Dec 6, 2004 (AP) — Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government on Monday called for an end to the violent conflict in Darfur, and said the Sudanese government and rebels had a duty to forge peace.
Minister for Africa Chris Mullin insisted Sudan must do more to disarm Arab militia blamed for terrorizing thousands of black African villagers in the sprawling western region.
But he also called on two rebel factions to stop fighting and questioned their commitment to ending the 22-month-old conflict peacefully.
“There are two parties to this dispute. It is far from clear that the rebels are serious about negotiating,” Mullin said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Despite a Nov. 9 cease-fire agreement, the rebel Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement continued to attack police stations and aid convoys and appeared to be trying to widen the dispute, he said.
“They have been attacking Arab tribes who have not so far been drawn into the conflict. Presumably they have been doing that with a view to drawing them in,” Mulling said.
Some 70,000 people have been killed and 1.8 million driven from their homes in the arid region, in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The violence erupted in February 2003 when the rebels, drawn largely from black African tribes, rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
For years there had been low-level conflict between African farmers and Arab herdsmen in the vast region, competing for scarce water and resources. But rebel demands for greater political representation exacerbated traditional tensions.
The government has acknowledged it recruited help from Arab tribes when it moved to crush the revolt. But it denies arming and unleashing Arab militiamen, known as the Janjaweed, to carry out a scorched earth campaign against African villagers.
Mullin, who held talks Monday with Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, Mohammed Yousef Abdallah, said the perpetrators of atrocities must be brought to justice.
“I think the Sudanese government as a whole has decided that it is in their interests to resolve this conflict. The trouble is, the genie is out of the bottle. It has got completely out of hand,” Mullin told the AP.
“Certainly on the question of disarming the militias we believe there is a lot more progress to be made. We do want to see the militias disarmed. We do want to see those primarily responsible for these atrocities to be brought to trial.”
The African Union currently has an 830-strong force in Darfur to monitor the cease-fire agreement. The deployment is being swelled to some 3,300 troops by January 2005.
Mullin was asked whether the AU could play a role in disarming the militia, and whether the expanded force would be big enough to patrol a region the size of France.
“The primary responsibility for policing Darfur ought to lie with the government of Sudan whose territory it is,” he said. “In the current circumstances I think it is far from clear that 3,300 will be enough and it is something we will have to look at in due course.”