GENEVA, 14 April 2004 — Sudan was yesterday preventing a UN team from entering the country to probe alleged atrocities by government-backed militias, as the United States accused Khartoum of violating a ceasefire aimed at ending a war that has claimed 10,000 lives.
The UN human rights team has been in neighboring Chad for the past week, interviewing Sudanese refugees who fled across the border to escape alleged ethnic cleansing by Arab militia in the western Darfur region.
But Sudanese authorities, despite promises of safe passage for international aid, were not allowing the investigators to cross into the strife-torn area itself following a cease-fire agreed with Darfur rebels last week, UN human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said in Geneva. “We haven’t had that kind of indication yet,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week urged the international community to consider decisive measures, including military action, if oil-rich Sudan fails to swiftly allow aid and human rights workers into the area.
The year-old Darfur war is described by the UN as the world’s worst current humanitarian disaster. It has displaced about 670,000 people inside Sudan since it erupted in February last year and forced about 100,000 others to flee to neighboring Chad.
The non-Arab rebels, mainly drawn from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa ethnic minorities in the largely desert region, complain of marginalization by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
They also fear the exclusion of their region from a power- and wealth-sharing accord in the final stages of negotiation between Khartoum and separatist rebels who have been at war in the mainly Christian south.
A cease-fire was agreed last week between Darfur’s warring sides. But on Monday the United States accused the Sudanese government and Khartoum-backed militias of continuing their attacks.
“Early reporting indicates some diminution in the fighting following the cease-fire going into effect, but we do still have reports that the government-supported Arab militias are attacking parts of western and southern Darfur,” it said.
Chadian mediators who brokered the cease-fire, which was due to come into effect Sunday, also insisted the truce was holding.
The interim deal struck in N’djamena called for a renewable 45-day truce, free access for humanitarian aid, the release of prisoners and the disarmament by Khartoum of the armed militias fighting alongside government troops in Darfur.
