AU chief slams slow response to Darfur crisis

ADDIS ABABA, March 8 (AFP) — African Union (AU) commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare denounced the international community for its slow response to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region.

“I do think that the humanitarian situation results from a real need and not assisting Darfur in the current situation is like not assisting a person in danger,” he told reporters here.

“For a long time now, people have been talking denouncing but nothing has really happened,” Konare said. “This is the right time to intervene. It is not tomorrow, because tomorrow it will be too late.”

His comments echoed similar remarks made on Monday by UN chief Kofi Annan who said he was “worried that we are not moving fast enough to deal with the appalling situation in Darfur.”

Since an uprising by local rebel groups began in February 2003, Darfur has been a theater of bloody attacks, drought and food shortages that have claimed the lives of at least 70,000 people and displaced some 1.6 million others.

Despite widespread international condemnation of the situation, attacks by rebels, government troops and Khartoum’s proxy militia continue.

Konare made his comments at a ceremony at the headquarters here of the African Union which has deployed a force to Darfur to protect AU observers monitoring the military situation on the ground.