Sudan says to withdraw Antonov planes in Darfur
By Opheera McDoom
EL-FASHER, Sudan, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Sudan said on Saturday it would remove all its Antonov planes and would not use them at all in its troubled Darfur region, where it has been accused of using the aircraft to bomb villages.
“We are not going to use Antonov aircraft at all anymore,” Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Hussein told Reuters during a trip to the remote west on Saturday. “We are not going to use them at all not for anything,” he said.
The governor of North Darfur state, Osman Kedir, said all the aircraft had been withdrawn from the region which is the size of France. “They have been withdrawn. All of them and they will not return — from all of Darfur,” he said.
The top U.N. envoy Jan Pronk said earlier this week he had asked the government to stop flying Antonovs because they scared civilians into fleeing their homes and gave the impression of coordination with fierce attacks by Arab militias, who are accused of burning, looting, raping and killing in non-Arab villages.
Tens of thousands have been killed in the violence and more than 1.8 million people have fled their homes.
The government has said it needs to fly the planes for reconnaissance and said the ceasefire and security deals signed with the rebels only banned them from bombing, not from flying their aircraft.
First Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, on his first visit to Darfur since taking responsibility for the region last month, said on Saturday he wanted to see for himself what had been happening. He met international aid workers in all three Darfur states.
“We want … to put our message across to the rebels to say that it is in the interests of the country if both sides would abide by the ceasefire protocols and to focus on settling … the Darfur conflict through peaceful means and negotiations,” he said.
A U.N.-commissioned report released on Monday stopped short of the U.S. assessment that there was genocide in Darfur, but did say government and military officials and militia leaders were responsible for widespread abuses, which may constitute crimes against humanity, and may be no less serious than genocide.
It handed a confidential list of 51 names of those suspected of crimes to the U.N. secretary-general and recommended they be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But in comments published on Saturday, Taha said that no Sudanese national would be prosecuted in a court outside the country.
“The government will not accept any official to go to any (legal) organ outside the country because Sudan has fair legal organs,” Taha was quoted as saying in several semi-official newspapers during his visit to Darfur.
When asked by Reuters on Saturday to clarify his comments, he said: “I was referring to the ICC.”