BRUSSELS, 10 August 2004 — The European Union said yesterday its fact-finding mission to Sudan had found no evidence of genocide in the troubled region of Darfur, though there was widespread violence there. “We are not in the situation of genocide there,” said Pieter Feith, an adviser to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, after a visit to Sudan. “But it is clear there is widespread, silent and slow, killing going on, and village burning on a fairly large scale.”
Feith told a news briefing he had some doubts about the Sudanese government’s willingness to cooperate in disarming the Janjaweed Arab militia, whose onslaught on Darfur villages had created a humanitarian crisis in the region.
But he added that the EU and other international players appeared to have no choice but to cooperate with Khartoum on bringing peace to the region, because none of them was ready to mount any significant military operation there.
“There are considerable doubts as to the willingness of Sudan’s government to assume its duty to protect its civilian population against attacks,” he said.
The delegation had arrived in Darfur last Tuesday for a five-day mission to evaluate how the EU can help implement a ceasefire in the western region. Sudan’s government is under mounting international pressure to resolve the crisis sparked by its crackdown in Darfur.
The Sudanese government has said it will adhere to a joint Sudan-UN plan for ending the crisis in the western Darfur region, Sudanese media reported yesterday.
The plan, which includes setting up safe areas for the return of displaced people in Darfur, was accepted by the government during a cabinet meeting in Khartoum on Sunday, reported the Sudan News Agency (SUNA).
The plan, drawn up by the UN Special Envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk and Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail last week, calls for the government to secure specific villages and camps and to set up safe access routes and escorted convoys, State Foreign Minister Al-Tigani Salih Fidhail told Sudanese media.
In addition, the agreement calls for a cease-fire between government forces and rebels in the safe areas and for the African Union monitors to ensure the rebels lay down their arms, said Fidhail. Under the agreement Khartoum reportedly has to make sure that pro- government militias also lay down their arms.
However, the AU, planning to increase their planned force in Darfur from 300 to almost 2,000, suffered a setback yesterday, when Khartoum said it rejects the plans. According to SUNA, Sudan had told the AU they had agreed only to receive a 300-strong protection force. Khartoum also rejected a strengthened mandate for the AU force, from protection to fully fledged peacekeeping.
The news came ahead of an AU meeting in Addis Ababa where the increase and mandate change of the African force were to be discussed.
Meanwhile, the government in Khartoum and the two rebel groups fighting in Darfur have agreed to sit down to new talks in Nigeria, starting Aug. 23. The last round of talks broke down in July.
Late Sunday, the Arab League ended a one-day special meeting on Darfur called by Sudan. The Arab foreign ministers called for the arrest of leaders of the government-supported militia in Sudan and rejected any foreign military intervention in the country.
The ministers also called for an investigation into human rights violations in the western Sudanese region and for the voluntary return of refugees to their homes.
Participants in the meeting, which included representatives from the (AU), the UN and Nigeria, called for “an immediate prosecution of some Janjaweed leaders as a beginning to a wide-scale disarmament campaign of outlawed militias”.
