KHARTOUM, 28 April 2004 — Sudan’s President Omar Bashir paid a brief visit to the troubled Darfur region in the west of the country yesterday, and promised his government would start development projects in the region, state radio reported. Bashir’s visit took place as a team from the UN High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) is in Darfur investigating alleged human rights abuses by the government-backed Arab janjaweed militia.

He also called on the local rebel groups in Darfur to put down their weapons and “participate in the building of the country”. Bashir’s government has been accused by the UN of helping the Arab militias commit widespread atrocities against the local black Muslim population in Darfur.

UN human rights investigators are interviewing witnesses to alleged crimes in Darfur, a spokesman said yesterday. A five-member team, which held extensive talks last week with officials in Khartoum, arrived at the weekend in Darfur, UN spokesman Jose Luis Diaz told a news briefing in Geneva.

It was spending the day in Al-Fashir in northern Darfur after having been to Nyala in the south, and will later go to Al-Geneina, along the border with Chad. Alleged violations have been reported in all three towns in the arid region.

The United Nations has called the Darfur conflict the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis and rights groups have said atrocities are still being committed by government-backed militias despite a ceasefire deal reached earlier this month.

Peace talks between Khartoum and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Kenya are deadlocked on whether Islamic law would apply in Khartoum during an envisaged six-year transition period, when the city will serve as the joint capital for an interim administration before a referendum on self-determination for the south.

Sudan’s government has also said the Darfur rebels have signed a deal to hold a conference to discuss the 14-month-old conflict but the rebels yesterday denied they had come to an agreement.

“The agreement was signed yesterday (April 25) in the presence of the Chadian president... The agreement was to hold an all-Darfur collective conference to solve the problem of Darfur,” spokesman Mohamed Yousif Abdalla said.

“We also agreed to another meeting after two weeks under the auspices of the Chadian president,” Abdalla added.

But the two rebel groups that launched a revolt against Khartoum in arid Darfur in February last year said there was no new agreement and they would not attend the conference. The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement said its delegation had withdrawn as it did not have a mandate to discuss political issues in the peace talks, but one member had remained and signed without authorization from the movement.

The other rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, said in a statement on its website www.sudanjem.com that it did not have a delegation in N’Djamena and that a conference would not solve the Darfur problem.