KHARTOUM, 13 August 2004 — The UN envoy to Sudan has tried to ease the pressure on Khartoum after a flurry of indictments of the government’s failure to end the crisis in Darfur drew irate reactions from President Omar Bashir.
Jan Pronk, quoted in yesterday’s Akhbar Al-Youm daily, said an action plan Khartoum has agreed to “does not set 30 days as a deadline but as a period which can be renewed and amended until all provisions” of a Security Council resolution are implemented.
The action plan for Darfur signed Tuesday by Pronk and Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail gave the authorities 30 days to create safe areas for civilians to search for food and cultivate their land without fear of attack.
The deal was already backtracking on a July 30 Security Council resolution giving Khartoum 30 days to crack down on the pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias accused of committing atrocities against the black African population in Darfur.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s envoy on the ground was trying to ease the war of words which has been escalating between the world body and Khartoum.
Ismail, speaking to reporters Wednesday, asked the United Nations to control its statements “if it really wants security to prevail in Darfur, otherwise the government will reconsider its commitments.”
Quoted in the press yesterday, Pronk acknowledged the black African groups which started the rebellion in Darfur in February 2003 should be disarmed as well as the marauding Janjaweed.
Pronk’s conciliatory comments came as another Sudanese newspaper, the Al-Anbaa daily, quoted Bashir as requesting the help of tribal leaders in Darfur to rein in the rebel groups. Bashir has repeatedly tried to put the ball back in the rebels’ court by saying the Janjaweed could be brought under control only if Darfur rebel groups disarmed at the same time.
Reacting to the recent string of accusations leveled at his action since the Darfur crisis hit the limelight last month, Bashir reiterated his commitment to ending the bloodshed and what has been described the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.
Calls in the United States for a military intervention in Darfur have been gaining momentum, prompting Bashir to accuse Western powers of seeking to plunder his country’s resources.
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo has invited representatives of the Sudanese government and rebel leaders to attend talks in Abuja on Aug. 23 in order to find a way to end the war.
The country also warned Sudan yesterday that if it does not allow African Union peacekeepers and diplomats to resolve the Darfur crisis it will end up facing less friendly pressure from outside the continent.
Bashir accused Western nations of interfering in the Darfur region to try to exploit the country’s gold and oil resources. Bashir said Western nations, especially Britain, were inflaming the Darfur fighting to destabilize wider Sudan.
“There is an agenda to seek for petrol and gold in the region,” he told a women’s union meeting on Darfur in Khartoum. “This highlife that they (the West) enjoy now is a result of the theft of the colonies and their riches and peoples,” he added with specific reference to Britain, which granted Sudan independence in 1956.
