KHARTOUM, 20 August 2004 — Sudan is confident it will prove to the UN Security Council it has made progress to protect more than a million people who have fled fighting in Darfur, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said yesterday. He also said security in camps for the displaced people was now good, but the surrounding areas needed work and Khartoum was deploying police to improve this.
A spokeswoman for UN envoy Jan Pronk said the government appeared to be taking its commitments seriously but the United Nations still wanted to see better security for victims of what it calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Under a July 30 Security Council resolution, Sudan was given a month to prove it was making progress toward disarming marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed and improve security in the remote western region, or face possible sanctions.
The UN estimates that up to 50,000 people have died in Darfur since two rebel groups took up arms there last year. Khartoum denies rebel charges of arming the Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Ismail told reporters: “I am confident (about the Security Council) because I think I’m doing the right things and I’m going to continue doing them. That’s why I think any credible evaluation will support me rather than put obstacles in front of me.”
Pronk will report on progress in Darfur to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Aug. 30 after senior UN officials visit the area next week to assess security in the camps. “The government did some things on the ground ... but we still have to see a substantial, verifiable, sustainable improvement of the security situation,” Pronk’s spokeswoman, Radhia Achouria, told BBC radio.
“The government ... is expected to give us a list of Janjaweed militia which are supposed to be under the influence of the government ... but we still have to see that,” she added.
The rebels and the Islamic government in Khartoum signed a humanitarian cease-fire in April but both sides have since accused the other of violations.
A leader of one of the rebel groups, Abdel Wahed Mohamed Al-Nur of the Sudan Liberation Movement, appealed to the United States, Britain and the European Union yesterday for military intervention. He said in a statement that the situation in Darfur was intolerable because of epidemics among the displaced.
African Union cease-fire observers and monitors have been deployed in Darfur with 150 more Nigerian troops expected to arrive on Aug. 25. The conflict in Darfur is separate from the long civil war in the south, which pits the government against rebels in the mainly animist or Christian south and has claimed about two million lives.
Peace talks in Kenya have made some headway toward a deal in the south and officials had said agreement would be possible by August or September, but Ismail dismissed that.
“My expectation is that maybe the talks will resume at the level of technical experts to try to narrow the differences on the security arrangements and ... that will be followed by a meeting maybe at a higher level,” Ismail said.
Asked about a time frame, he said: “Let us talk about some time during this year. We can talk up to maybe October or November. That’s our expectation.”
The Nigerian Senate, meanwhile yesterday voted to approve a decision by President Olusegun Obasanjo to make 1,500 troops available for an African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur. “The Senate has approved the president’s request on the deployment of troops to Sudan,” Senate President Adolphus Wabara confirmed after the vote in Abuja.
Some senators spoke out against the decision, calling on their colleagues to wait until next week to allow the assembly’s defense committee to study the plan, but their concerns were overruled in a simple voice vote, AFP saw. The decision clears the way for Nigeria to send an initial company of 150 soldiers to Sudan to join a similar Rwandan unit already in place, and gives Obasanjo authority to deploy two further 770-strong battalions if necessary.
Khartoum has not yet said whether it will accept a planned 2,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur, where a brutal civil war has left more than 30,000 dead and a million at risk of starvation.
