Sudan tells U.N. to back up its Darfur death toll

KHARTOUM, March 15 (Reuters) – Sudan demanded on Tuesday that the United Nations produce evidence to support a U.N. statement which said 180,000 people had died of disease and hunger over the past 19 months in the troubled Darfur region.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.

The spokesman for U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said on Monday that Egeland had estimated that more than 180,000 people had died in Sudan’s Darfur from hunger and disease over the past 18 months.

U.N. spokesman Brian Grogan said the toll does not include people killed during ongoing violence in Sudan’s western region.

Khartoum called the figure a ploy to pressure the U.N. Security Council to take action against Sudan.

But Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the figure was not mentioned during his trip and said Egeland was applying double standards by calling for sanctions on Sudan over other conflicts in Iraq and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

“Jan Egeland was here – I met him (and) he never mentioned this number,” Ismail told reporters in Khartoum. “Whether it is part of the pressure on the Security Council to pass the resolution, which I tend to believe, or a different agenda we don’t know.”

The U.N. Security Council is divided over a resolution on Sudan, on issues including imposing targeted sanctions, and the referral of those suspected of war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court. The council has been deliberating for more than a month.

Mustafa said Egeland should produce research and figures to support his claim. Sudan has long denied a U.N. estimate last year that up to 10,000 people were dying every month in makeshift camps housing almost 2 million people who fled their homes during the more than two-year-old rebellion in Darfur.

The World Health Organisation said at the end of January that the figure of 10,000 a month had dropped but that thousands were still dying each month in the camps.

Sudan itself has no reliable figures but has in the past mentioned figures of around 7,000 total dead during the rebellion by non-Arab tribes who accuse the government of discriminating against them in favour of Arab tribes in the remote region bordering Chad.

“Jan Egeland also issued a statement… saying he is fully supportive for sanctions to be put on the government of Sudan – so you can see the double standards here,” Ismail said. “He never mentioned anything about sanctions on those who are working in Iraq or Ein Palestine.”