KHARTOUM, 4 August 2004 — Sudan’s government announced yesterday it was ready to share power and resources with ethnic minority rebels in Darfur, as it came under mounting international pressure to resolve the humanitarian crisis sparked by its crackdown in the western region. “We are ready to share power and resources in Darfur, we are ready for genuine federalism,” Information Minister Al-Zhawi Ibrahim Malik told AFP in an interview.

“We are ready to reach an agreement as we have done in resolving the conflict in southern Sudan,” said Malik in reference to Kenyan peace talks with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army aimed at ending the two-decade civil war with the southern rebel group. Malik, a former mines minister, recalled that foreign firms had found oil in Darfur as well as copper and uranium deposits, creating a potentially strong resource basis for any autonomous administration in the region.

Khartoum is “ready to resume negotiations any time and any place in Africa,” following a breakdown of talks in Addis Ababa last month, he said. “Let them come to the negotiating table,” he said, adding that the “United Nations and the African Union should force” the Darfur rebels if necessary.

Earlier Sudan said it is prepared to deploy up to 12,000 policemen to secure the war-torn region of Darfur, should that become necessary. Malik said the current plan was to increase the existing number of policemen in the region from 5,000 to 6,000 over the next few days.

The minister added that the increase was in line with an agreement between the Sudanese government and the United Nations aimed at securing the region and ridding it of various militia groups blamed for many of the atrocities committed against the civilian population.

Malik, however, denied that his government had any plans to reinforce the armed forces as suggested by certain media reports. Khartoum has come under massive diplomatic pressure to rein in the state-sponsored Arab militias accused of terrorizing the region’s indigenous minorities since ethnic rebels launched an uprising early last year.

The news came after a meeting between UN special envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, and senior Sudanese officials. The UN Security Council last week gave Khartoum 30 days to disarm the Janjawid militia accused of killing civilians, burning and looting villages in Darfur.

Pronk said after the meeting the security situation in the camps for displaced people in Darfur had improved, although militias were still active in the area, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The Darfur rebels, who launched an uprising against Khartoum in early 2003, and rights groups accuse Khartoum of sending the Janjawid to attack non-Arab Darfur villages. “There are still many militias around. That is leading to a great deal of insecurity. Also the rebel activities are adding to the insecurity,” Pronk said after meeting Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail. “But security in the camps has improved.”

Human rights groups and the rebels say the government has armed the Janjawid, whose campaign the US Congress has labeled as genocide against Darfur’s non-Arabs. Ismail said he had agreed with Pronk to set out a plan of what Khartoum could achieve in 30 days and after that.

Meanwhile, the governor of Sudan’s eastern Red Sea State warned in comments published yesterday of an impending offensive by rebels from the Beja minority which he charged was supported by a Western intelligence agency.

His remarks came just a day after a similar warning from the governor of neighboring Kassala State.

Hatim Al-Wasilah Al-Sammani told the government-linked Sudan Media Center that he had ordered a general mobilization in Red Sea State and heightened security around key infrastructure to guard against the threatened offensive by the Beja Congress and Free Lions.

Sammani charged that the Beja rebels were receiving support from their ethnic minority counterparts in the western region of Darfur, as well as from a “hostile” Western intelligence agency, which he did not identify. The governor also accused Eritrea of backing the rebels.