Zoellick fears support for Darfur could ebb
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
ABU SHOUP CAMP, Darfur, April 15 (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick expressed concern on Friday that support for Sudan’s Darfur region could ebb before refugees packed into teeming camps to escape violence could return home.
Zoellick visited a refugee camp to underscore a revived U.S. strategy to press for an end to the conflict between Sudan’s government and Darfur rebels that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 2 million to flee their homes since 2003.
The camp, one of the best organized by the international community, counted roughly 40,000 inhabitants when it opened last June but has swelled to twice that amount. More people were arriving all the time, officials and aid workers said.
Zoellick welcomed the money pledged by donors in Oslo this week to help southern Sudan cement a peace deal ending a 20-year civil war, and urged a similar commitment to Darfur in the west of Sudan to end the conflict there.
“We have to keep that up,” he said of U.S. and international support for Darfur humanitarian efforts.
“But my worry is that if it (the Darfur crisis) continues whether the support would lag,” he told reporters.
Many refugees lined the route of his convoy, while he passed thousands living in mud brick huts and flimsy tents sprawled across an expanse of dusty desert in the camp near El Fasher.
The most immediate need at the refugee camp was to ensure provision of basic services like food and water, he said.
But he stressed that work must also proceed quickly on a peace deal that could end the killings and atrocities in Darfur once and for all.
Since January, Darfur rebel forces and the Sudanese government seemed to have moved back from the conflict but serious problems still existed from militias and bandits, he said aid workers had told him.
Sudan is accused of arming Arab militias accused of raping and murdering civilians, and burning villages. Sudan denies the charge, calling the so-called Janjaweed militias outlaws.
Zoellick expressed his intent to keep pushing the expansion of the African Union force now serving as monitors in Darfur from roughly 2,000 to 7,000 or 8,000, and to persuade NATO or various NATO members to provide logistical support for the AU mission.
Earlier Zoellick said the United States might soon begin to help Sudan’s former rebels in the south with military modernization to encourage efforts to implement a peace deal.
The January agreement that ended two decades of war calls for the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to integrate their armed forces, but allows the SPLM to operate a separate force in the south for six years.
On Tuesday donors exceeded Sudan’s aid requests by pledging $4.5 billion to help the south recover from Africa’s longest civil war.
The United States, with a pledge of $1.7 billion, is the largest donor. The U.S. Congress has approved about half that amount and is working on approving the rest.
But the United States has said the funding for the south is tied to an end in violence in Darfur, saying the fighting in Sudan’s west “cast a dangerous shadow” over the country.