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Musharraf promises to help German bid to salvage Sudan crisis

Pervez_Musharraf.jpgISLAMABAD, July 22 (AFP) — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told visiting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer Thursday he would take a personal interest in preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan.

Fischer, in Pakistan for two days on the last leg of a 10-day Asian tour, asked the Islamic republic to use its UN Security Council position to exert influence on Sudan to prevent a deepening of the humanitarian crisis in its Darfur region, where over 10,000 people have been killed in the past 18 months.

“Be assured I will take a personal interest,” Musharraf told Fischer, according to a German official present at their 90-minute talks in Islamabad.

Fischer, also Germany’s vice chancellor, insisted during talks with Musharraf “that a humanitarian catastrophe would have to be prevented in Sudan,” the official said.

If the Sudanese government did not live up to promises it made to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan earlier this month on curbing the violence, a Security Council resolution “would be unavoidable,” Fischer was quoted as telling Musharraf.

Sudan’s western Darfur region is in the throes of what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 10,000 people have been killed since rebel groups rose up in February 2003, prompting a brutal response from Sudanese forces and government-sponsored Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

Fischer is seeking support at the Security Council, where both Pakistan and Germany currently hold seats, in putting pressure on Khartoum.

“What we need is a majority on the Security Council and full cooperation above all in establishing security and disarming the Janjaweed militias,” Fischer said after arriving in Islamabad late Wednesday.

Musharraf insisted that Sudan’s territorial integrity be preserved in any bid to resolve the crisis there.

“He said that in the whole crisis, the territorial integrity of Sudan could not be violated. Fischer replied ‘of course not’,” the German official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.

UN officials say the Janjaweed have carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans. More than a million people have been displaced in the conflict.

Fischer visited Khartoum earlier in July and warned the Sudanese government that talks on possible UN sanctions would become “much more serious” if it failed to stop the violence.

Fischer said the divisions in the Security Council last year over whether to invade Iraq underscored the need for reform.

“We think especially based on the experiences of last year, the UN system must be reformed if we are interested in an efficient multilateral system.

“This efficient multilateral system I think is crucial and therefore we have also to rethink… the composition of the Security Council.”

In New Delhi last Wednesday Fischer said German and India considered each other “natural candidates for a permanent seat on an enlarged Security Council and will support each other in this endeavour.”

In China last week he called for help from Beijing, which holds one of the UN Security Council’s five permanent seats, in pushing Khartoum to make good on pledges to rein in the militias behind the bloodshed.

Fischer also visited Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

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