Sudan’s Darfur at risk of more violence thanks to UN rift

KHARTOUM, March 24 (AFP) — The rift between United Nations members over how to make Khartoum accountable for crimes committed in the war-torn Darfur region makes the prospect of further violence more likely, rebels and commentators warned.

A Sudanese internally displaced woman at the Al-Fateh camp. (AFP).

The UN Security Council is expected to vote Thursday on a peacekeeping force to monitor the January peace accord that ended 21 years of north-south civil war in Sudan.

But nations are at odds over how to tackle the separate crisis in the western region of Darfur, where an estimated 180,000 people have died since a rebel uprising against the government broke out more than two years ago.

France wants to refer the atrocities blamed on the Sudanese government in Darfur to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but Washington fiercely opposes the world body and wants to create a special tribunal in Tanzania.

US President George W. Bush’s administration staunchly opposes the ICC over fears that US citizens could be the target of lawsuits politically motivated by opposition to US policies.

Khartoum is accused of having brutally repressed the black African Darfur uprising by unleashing the infamous Arab proxy militias known as Janjaweed, whose crimes have been widely documented.

But rebel movements and human rights organisations warned that further political squabbling was only delaying much-needed action on the ground and running the risk of allowing violence to spread.

“I hope these countries will overcome their differences because the situation is getting worse in Darfur and it’s an emergency,” said a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement, one of the two main Darfur rebel movements.

“For us it’s not so important where the court is but we must not waste more time. We want serious, practical measures, not like before,” Mahjub Hussein told AFP.

The current phrasing of the draft resolution proposed by France is expected to be met by a US veto, and member countries were engaged in last-ditch discussions to break the deadlock.

Human Rights Watch lashed out at Washington over a recent attempt to split the resolution in three, a move the US rights watchdog charged would thwart any effort to prosecute Khartoum officials.

“The United States is hanging the people of Darfur out to dry by stalling on justice,” Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, said in a statement released Thursday.

“After labeling Darfur a genocide, the United States is now blocking the credible threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which could immediately deter further violence in Darfur,” he charged.

In a report released earlier this month, the International Crisis Group warned that the situation would worsen in Darfur if the UN failed to agree on a course of action and that violence could ultimately undermine the fledgling peace in the south.

“If (UN Security) Council divisions and veto threats again water down the final product as has happened several times already, the situation in Darfur will worsen,” the Brussels-based think tank said.

“And it is likely to be only a matter of time until its poison affects the peace deal that was signed on 9 January 2005 to end the long war between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM).”

UN officials themselves have stressed the international community’s failure to find a political solution in Darfur, even as aid agencies gradually succeeded in containing the humanitarian crisis.

“The world has failed utterly in the most important aspect, which is to heal the wounds of the warring parties by political efforts,” UN relief coordinator in Sudan Jan Egeland told AFP earlier this month.