Gaddafi attacks Annan’s proposals for Darfur

TRIPOLI, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has attacked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for the European Union and NATO to help end the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, saying it risked creating a second Iraq.

Annan urged NATO and European Union officials at a security conference in Germany on Sunday to help in Darfur, arguing that the African Union mission in the region was inadequate to the scale of the challenge.

“The brother Kofi Annan’s statement is very dangerous and stops us from pursuing the African efforts. If his statement were to be implemented that will make Sudan a second Iraq,” Gaddafi said in remarks reported late on Monday by the official news agency Jana.

“I made my position on that known to the African Union chairman and the leaders in Darfur.”

Gaddafi has close relations with the government in Khartoum as well as tribes and rebels in Darfur region, which borders on Libya and Chad.

A U.N. commission of inquiry found lat month that Darfur’s civilian population had suffered war crimes at the hands of Arab militias and that these may amount to crimes against humanity, although it stopped short of using the term genocide.