KHARTOUM, 30 August 2004 — Khartoum’s official media reported yesterday that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had congratulated President Omar Bashir on his government’s efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur as a Security Council deadline for action expired.

In Saturday night’s eve-of-deadline telephone call to Bashir, Annan voiced his “appreciation for Sudan’s efforts to resolve the crisis,” the state SUNA news agency said. Annan “described as positive the reports he had received on the subject from UN representatives in the (three Darfur) states and expressed hope that they would continue,” the news agency said.

Bashir replied that his government was “striving to return Darfur to normal and added that a large proportion of the displaced were currently in the process of going back to their homes on a voluntary basis to lead a normal life in their villages.”

Annan is due to report to the Security Council today on Khartoum’s compliance with the 30-day deadline it issued on June 30. A draft circulated to the government and the two ethnic minority rebel groups on the sidelines of peace talks in the Nigerian capital was largely negative.

“General insecurity persists with continuing violence by various armed groups, banditry and lawlessness. There are clear indications that Khartoum security agents are systematically harassing and intimidating the internally displaced persons in a scheme aimed at forcing them out of camps,” it said.

“At nearly every IDP location in the area, Arab militias continue to patrol ... reports of rape, beatings, disappearances, and looting continue.”

The report said in all nearly 1.5 million ethnic minority villagers had fled their homes or seen their livelihoods destroyed during the government’s bloody clampdown on the rebels, which has seen state-sponsored militias unleashed on their presumed supporters.

Peace talks between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government were due to resume after rebels boycotted the meeting for 24 hours, accusing Khartoum of violating a cease-fire by killing 75 civilians in six villages.

The African Union, which is the mediator in the talks, began a probe into the allegations, just one of a series of tit-for-tat accusations about cease-fire violations in what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“The cease-fire commission has already commenced investigations and is expected to put in its findings during the week,” said African Union spokesman Assane Ba, part of the delegation to Abuja, Nigeria.

The talks, which began on Monday, have so far foundered on squabbling over disarmament and the cease-fire accusations. The boycott by both the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) Darfur delegations came just two days ahead of an Aug. 30 UN Security Council deadline for Sudan to improve security for refugees or face sanctions.

Sudan’s interior minister in turn accused rebels of their own cease-fire violation and said Khartoum had met UN demands.

“I think that we expended a huge effort and have fulfilled our commitments to the United Nations 100 percent,” Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein told reporters in Khartoum yesterday.

“We are expecting in the next month to deploy in excess of 2,000 extra police we think that in that way we will be able to cover the whole of Darfur.”

In another development, Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan Turabi has gone back on hunger strike to protest his continuing house arrest just two months after being hospitalized following a four-week protest fast, aides and relatives said yesterday. Turabi, 74, has barricaded himself in a single room inside the Khartoum North remand home where has been detained since his release from hospital on Aug. 15, his son Seddiq confirmed.