Darfur: US Seeks Clarification of Reported Sudanese Concessions

From VOA

In a talk with reporters here, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said reports from Riyadh are unclear about whether Sudan is ready to accept the hybrid force without conditions.

He also said the Bush administration wants to hear directly from the U.N. chief before deciding how to proceed.

"It is fair to say that we want to understand from the Secretary-General what he heard," he said. "Is there a change in view from the Sudanese? Is there something in their comments with which the international system can work? Now, I have to caution you that to this point the Sudanese have not given any indication, or any real public indication that they're dropping any preconditions, or that they're are ready to follow-up on the Addis Ababa agreement."

The Sudanese agreed in principle at an international conference in Addis Ababa last November to accept the hybrid force, mandated earlier by the U.N. Security Council.

But Khartoum has since blocked the admission of U.N. logistics teams, frustrating the United States and other supporters of expanded peacekeeping in Darfur.

The reported Sudanese concession came amid reports the Bush administration is only a few days away from announcing a package of new financial sanctions against the Khartoum government.

Spokesman McCormack said whether the sanctions go forward depends on an administration assessment of what he termed "the whole landscape," including the latest Sudanese comments, and whether they actually reflect a change in policy.

McCormack said in diplomatic contacts, the United States assured Sudanese officials the hybrid force would focus its activities in Darfur, and not function as what he termed a "posse," trying to round up alleged war criminals in Khartoum.

From Reuters

The United States was dubious Friday that Sudan's government was more open to letting international peacekeepers into Darfur and held out the threat of impending new U.S. sanctions against Khartoum.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was seeking more information following an announcement by Saudi Arabia Thursday that Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had agreed to allow U.N. logistic support to help African Union forces already in Darfur.

"We are going to follow up and see what, if anything, might be built upon from the conversations in Riyadh," McCormack said, referring to meetings Bashir had in Riyadh with Saudi, U.N. and African officials. "We want to understand if there is anything that could be seen as a change of posture."

"I have to caution you that to this point the Sudanese have not given any indication, any real public indication, that they have dropped any preconditions (for a force)," he added.

Bashir has long resisted the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to the vast western province of Darfur, where Washington says a genocide has taken place through government support for nomadic militia groups. Sudan denies this.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the fighting and about 2.5 million displaced by the conflict.

A concern of Sudan's government is that U.N. peacekeepers will be used to round up officials suspected of committing atrocities in Darfur, which McCormack said was not the aim of the new force.

"We have sought to assure the Sudanese that this is not a force that is focused on activities in Khartoum but is focused on what is happening in Darfur," said McCormack.

The United States is expected, possibly within the next few days, to announce expanded sanctions against Sudan, including a further limit on dollar transactions and a travel and banking ban on three more individuals, one of them a rebel leader.

Asked whether he thought Bashir was trying to stall these sanctions by appearing more open to the hybrid force, McCormack said he did not know what the Sudanese leader's calculations were but he made clear sanctions were still an option.

"It is a fact that we are looking at what other diplomatic levers we might apply to the situation to get a change in view from the Sudanese," said McCormack, adding that an announcement was not likely on Friday.

Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for the group Human Rights Watch, said it appeared that Bashir was once again using stalling tactics. The United States, he said, should act now and not wait.

"Nothing is going to happen until they roll out the sanctions," Malinowski said.

Darfur: UN Council Stops Short of Blaming Sudan

From the AP

The U.N. Human Rights Council expressed concern over the situation in Darfur on Friday, but stopped short of criticizing Sudan's government.

The compromise resolution passed by consensus without a vote after Germany agreed to remove any mention of holding Khartoum responsible for the "armed attacks on civilian population and humanitarian workers, widespread destruction of villages, and continued and widespread violence."

The resolution took note of a report released earlier this month by a group of experts that accused the government of President Omar al-Bashir of orchestrating attacks by Arab janjaweed militiamen against civilians in Darfur.

The resolution _ which bridged the positions of the European Union and African countries led by Algeria _ also expressed regret that the group led by American Nobel laureate Jody Williams was unable to visit the western Sudanese region. However, it neither criticized Sudan's government for blocking the mission or officially adopted the report's findings.

Khartoum refused to grant visas to Williams' six-member team to visit Darfur because it said one of the experts was biased.

The council's resolution called on Sudan to allow a new group of experts to visit the region. As at the last team's establishment, Khartoum immediately pledged cooperation.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million driven from their homes in Darfur in four years of fighting between rebels and militias.

The resolution passed by the 47-nation council makes no mention of the recommendations in the Williams report that U.N. peacekeepers be deployed to Darfur in support of a poorly equipped African Union force there, and that Sudan cooperate with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague examining war crimes allegations.

The issue of Darfur is seen as a key credibility test for the council, which replaced the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission last year but has already suffered its own share of criticism for focusing heavily on alleged Israeli abuses, while ignoring crises in other parts of the world.

From Reuters

The United Nations' top human rights body on Friday kept up the pressure on Sudan over Darfur, but stopped short of blaming Khartoum for widespread killings and rape in its vast western region.

A resolution, passed unanimously by the 47-state Human Rights Council, expressed deep concern at the "seriousness of ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur."

The text, agreed after days of hard wrangling between European and African states, instructed Council special investigators into abuse, including torture and violence against women, to scrutinize Khartoum's compliance with past international recommendations and report back in June.

"The decision is a success for the European Union, it is a success for Africa, it is a success for the Human Rights Council and we hope very much that it will be a success for the people of Darfur," said ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, whose country holds the EU presidency.

More than 200,000 people are believed to have died and some 2.5 million have been driven from their homes into squalid camps since simmering ethnic conflict erupted into revolt in 2003.

Among the documents to be considered by the monitoring team will be a report by a mission of inquiry submitted to the Council earlier this month accusing Khartoum of "orchestrating and participating" in systematic violations of humanitarian law.

Khartoum, which rejects charges by the United States and others of genocide in Darfur, blames rebel groups which have refused to sign a 2006 peace deal for continuing abuses.

It is resisting Western calls for a U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed in support of 7,000 under-financed monitors from the African Union who have been unable to stem the violence.

"This is the strongest statement that the Council has yet made on Darfur and the strongest it has made on any situation outside the Middle East," said one Western diplomat.

"It talks about violations and that means the Sudanese state, because in human rights law only states can commit violations," the diplomat added.

U.N. reports on Darfur have blamed Arab militias, which they say are armed and backed by Khartoum, for some of the worst atrocities, including mass rape and murder.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has summoned a junior government minister and a Darfur militia leader to answer war crimes charges in a first step toward bringing to trial those deemed responsible.

Human rights activists had seen Darfur as a test of the effectiveness of the Geneva-based Council, set up last year to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.

Although they make an exception for Israel, which is routinely pilloried, a majority of the developing country-dominated Council usually opposes condemning individual states for violations.

Amnesty International welcomed the decision on Darfur, although it criticized the Council's failure to denounce the role of the Sudanese government and its allies in the abuses.

"This resolution marks a major turning point," it said. "African delegations are saying to Sudan 'enough is enough'."

CAR/Darfur: Thousands Flee After Raid by French Troops

From The Independent

A raid by French paratroops on rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) destroyed a town and forced 2,000 civilians to flee into neighbouring Darfur.

Details of the three-day operation - the extent of which had been kept secret by the French army chief of staff - were obtained by The Independent after a United Nations emergency mission travelled to Birao, which is on the Sudan border.

"We found a ghost town," said Toby Lanzer, UN humanitarian affairs co-ordinator for CAR. "It was like Grozny or parts of Mogadishu. Seventy per cent of buildings were burnt and only about 600 civilians were left. They were in a dazed state. They have nothing.

"We urgently need to carry out aerial reconnaissance to find out where the rest of the population has gone. We have traced 2,000 to camps in Darfur. That people should choose to flee into Darfur gives a measure of how terrified they must have been."

France has a defence agreement with CAR and practically runs the country's army. It has previously argued that its operations are aimed at preventing the spread of the Darfur crisis.

But the Birao operation, which began on 4 March, seems to have been order-ed to evacuate 18 French soldiers stationed in the town since December.

Mirage F1 jets bombed rebel pick-up trucks and dozens of paratroops were airdropped into the combat zone.

The French soldiers who were in the town had been supporting CAR troops in ousting the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement (UFDR), a rebel group believed to draw fighters from CAR, Chad and Sudan.

Mr Lanzer said: "It was France's first major airborne para drop into a war zone since 19 May 1978, when the Foreign Legion jumped on Kolwezi, Zaire, to free European hostages from rebel hands."

He added that 150 French troops had remained at the site.

It is not suggested that the elite French troops burnt Birao to the ground. but given the pattern of conflict in the region, it is likely that much of the torching of homes, schools and a hospital was carried out by CAR soldiers who could not have recaptured the town without the help of the French.

Mr Lanzer did not wish to speculate. "It is not helpful to play the blame game. Our mission is humanitarian and it is urgent. We need to trace the thousands of civilians who have disappeared, and save lives."

Chad: Ten of Thousands Lack Food

From Reuters

Tens of thousands of displaced people are running out of food in strife-torn eastern Chad as rising violence spilling across the border from Darfur forces more people from their homes, the WFP said on Friday.

The U.N. food agency said it had planned to feed 50,000 Chadians in the parched scrubland region but ethnic conflict has displaced an additional 80,000 people who need urgent assistance.

They require an additional 7,500 metric tonnes of food at a cost of $7.5 million. The agency faces a race against time as food must be delivered before the rainy season starts in June, making roads impassable.

"This is not a sustainable situation," said WFP Chad Country Director Felix Bamezon. "Life in eastern Chad has always been precarious, but now tens of thousands of Chadians are being pushed to the breaking point."

"There is simply not enough food to go around."

The WFP already feeds 225,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps in eastern Chad and more than 45,000 Central African refugees in four camps in the south.

In addition, the 130,000 internally displaced Chadians are living in makeshift shelters on the outskirts of villages, a recent survey said. Many are living in ramshackle straw shelters and nearly a fifth do not have a roof over their heads.

Adding to the threat of food shortages, displaced people in eastern Chad also face violence from marauding Arab militia spilling across the border from Darfur, and fighting from long-running rebellions in both Chad and western Sudan.

Darfur: Sudan to Discuss UN Force in "Breakthrough"

From Reuters

Sudan has agreed to review the overall package the United Nations has proposed for easing the violence in Darfur, the minister of state for foreign affairs said on Friday.

Ali Karti said an agreement announced at an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia marked "progress" because Sudan was now open to discussion on U.N. Security Council resolution 1706 authorising the deployment of U.N. troops to the troubled Darfur region, where African Union (AU) troops have had little impact.

"This is a breakthrough because we have agreed to sit down and discuss the mandates in 1706," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"We are open to sitting down and discussing the overall package in Darfur, not just U.N. troops but everything," Karti added, saying the review would include a "heavy support package" such as planes.

The resolution calls for 22,500 U.N. troops and police officers to support the 7,000-member AU force in Sudan.

The African force has been unable to stop the violence that has left an estimated 200,000 people dead and forced 2.5 million from their homes since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir Bashir has rejected the U.N. resolution as an attempt to restore colonial rule, but has welcomed the world body's support for the ill-equipped AU force.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at an Arab summit in Riyadh on Thursday that Sudan has agreed to allow U.N. logistical support to help the AU mission.

He called it "a breakthrough that never happened before" and expressed hope it would lead to an immediate solution to the humanitarian tragedy in western Sudan.

The announcement came after Bashir met U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Arab League chief Amr Moussa, Saudi King Abdullah and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, who heads an East African body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.

A senior Bush administration official expressed scepticism about Thursday's announcement and said Washington would wait to see whether Khartoum had indeed reversed course.

Washington says a genocide has taken place in Darfur through government support for marauding nomadic militia groups, a charge Khartoum denies.

Before the Saudi announcement, U.S. officials from the State, Defense, Treasury and other departments had told Reuters that Washington would "tighten the screws" on Sudan with fresh measures, likely within days.

That would include a further limit on dollar transactions, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Karti, a member of Bashir's ruling National Congress Party, dismissed the U.S. plan.

"Sanctions are not new. They have been using sanctions as a weapon for years. They will not change anything and we will just go on. It is just unfortunate that instead of being positive at a time when we are trying to reach a comprehensive peace they are talking about negative steps," he said.

"This will only hurt our efforts."

Only one of three rebel groups signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government last year. U.N. officials say only a comprehensive political deal can end Darfur's suffering.

The United States also aims to pressure Bashir militarily by helping rebuild forces of the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army, which was at war with the north until a 2005 peace deal.

Karti said he was baffled by the plan and warned the United States would meet stiff opposition from all Sudanese.

"This is very strange. If you look at the south not one bullet is being fired and now the Americans are threatening to rebuild the army in the south," he said.

"This would threaten to destabilise the country and unite all of Sudan against the Americans -- the government, all the rebel groups in Darfur and the south."

Salva Kiir, the ex-rebel turned vice president, has said attacks in southern Sudan by militias allied with the country's ruling party will jeopardise the 2005 north-south peace deal.

Darfur: Rebels Won't Collect Dead Until Prisoners Released

From AFP

Members of the only Darfur rebel group to have signed a peace deal on Thursday refused to collect their dead following a Kharoum shootout with police until those detained in the clash were released.

The shaky peace agreement in Sudan's wartorn western region of Darfur was struck a blow on Saturday when a gunfight broke out between members of the Sudan Liberation Movement and police in Khartoum, resulting in 11 deaths.

"We are not going to collect the bodies of our martyrs from the mortuary until our detainees are released," said SLM spokesman Tayeb Khamis.

Some 90 members of the movement were arrested in the aftermath of the bloody clashes in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman and while dozens were released, 32 remain in custody.

Khamis said authorities had until the end of Thursday to release the remaining detainees, while a joint government-SLM committee was working on freeing them and agreeing on measures to prevent a reoccurence of clashes.

Darfur: Activists Train for More Effective Protesting

From VOA

As widespread violence continues in Darfur, so do efforts to combat it. In the United States and in countries around the world, groups of people often gather at Sudanese embassies and other locations to demonstrate support for the people of Darfur.

In Washington, DC recently, a training session focused on teaching participants how to solicit support from high ranking US politicians and other decision-makers influential in making foreign policy. Voice of America’s Cole Mallard was there and files this report.

Some twenty activists for Darfur gathered at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington. They came to learn the most effective way to get their point across to Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and to the world at large. One of the speakers, Mohamed Yahya, is from Darfur. Yahya is the founder and executive director of “Damanga,” a coalition working to restore human rights and ethnic communities in Darfur. He says, “We educate the people of the United States of America and elsewhere, individuals, communities, organizations, synagogues, and even mosques and churches --all faith based. We educate them and we try to get them involved so as to work together to accomplish this mission.”

Yahya says in the last two years alone, Damanga has substantially increased awareness of the Darfur crisis: “We covered almost 40 states around the United States…and we reached over 100 organizations and over 150 universities, and schools and colleges. Also we founded the SaveDarfur Coalition, which right now includes or represents over 160 different organizations.”

The leader of Damanga says his advocacy group has been successful in helping over 20,000 refugees from Darfur get protection, resettlement, asylum, and citizenship in European countries, the United States, Canada and Australia

Yvonne Paretsky co-chairs an advocacy committee within another group of activists, the Darfur Interfaith Network. Her expertise as an independent consultant is in reaching officials in embassies, consulates and UN missions as part of the “I Act/Darfur” campaign -- designed to pressure government officials in the United States and throughout the international community to take steps toward protecting and resettling refugees from Darfur. She says, “My role is to move people to act, and to give them the tools to act with, to give people an incentive…to remind them of either their moral directive to protect life or the political correctness of intervening on behalf of the victims, or the financial benefit of pulling out from operations that fund weapons and forces, used to harm non-combatant civilians.”

Paretsky says anyone can take simple actions and she can show anyone the way, beginning with “…how to write letters and op. ed. [opinion-editorial] pieces, how to support divestment legislation, how to participate in vigils and marches, how to lobby Congress, how to make donations, how to visit embassies, how to sign petitions, how to teach others to act.”

Another speaker with lobbying expertise shared tips on effective ways to approach the media on the importance of increasing public awareness. Brooke Menschel is the assistant legislative director of the American Jewish Committee, or AJC, an organization that promotes democracy and diversity. She said the AJC has a vital interest in sharing its expertise.

“From our own history we understand the cost of the passage of time and the importance of public outrage. Since 2003 the widespread human rights abuses, including torture and rape, have become commonplace throughout the Darfur region of Sudan, and the world can’t continue to stand idly by as the violence against innocent Darfuries – men, women, children – continues.”

Darfur: He's Still Kilgour of Darfur

From Embassy

He's technically retired, but former MP David Kilgour is just as busy now as he was when he was in the House of Commons. Even his wife thinks so, he tells me over lunch at the Parliament Pub last week.

In 2005, Mr. Kilgour retired after 26 years in Parliament. During his tenure in the House, he acquired a reputation for being a politician with an independent streak. He started out as a Progressive Conservative, crossed the floor to the Liberal side, then later dumped the Grits to sit as an independent when former Prime Minister Paul Martin refused to commit to more aid for Sudan's Darfur region. While some political commentators have called his moves unwise, one thing stands out about Mr. Kilgour–if it's a case involving human rights, he's ready to stand up and be counted among those who care.

That was the situation in the House of Commons in May 2005 when Mr. Kilgour became an unlikely power broker when a confidence vote in the House rested on his support for the minority Liberal government of the day. He refused to side with the government, which narrowly survived because of the Speaker's vote.

On exiting parliament, Mr. Kilgour embraced the cause of the Falun Gong. Last July, he co-authored a report detailing how the Chinese government harvests the organs of imprisoned Falun Gong members. The report generated a lot of interest around the world, with Mr. Kilgour traveling to 30 capitals to explain to governments the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

But if you think the moniker "Kilgour of Darfur" is no longer appropriate, he is quick to assert that he hasn't abandoned the desolate region, and adds that the high profile he gave to the Darfur cause when he was an MP is still very much alive in the House of Commons as MPs Irwin Cotler and Maurice Vellacott are quite active on the Darfur issue, as is Senator Roméo Dallaire. Plus, says Mr. Kilgour, he still gets 10 emails every day on Darfur. He recently attended a mock genocide trial in New York that found Sudanese President Omar Hassan El Bashir guilty of genocide.

"If anyone looks at my website, it's just full of stuff on Darfur," he says.

I point out that while the Darfur cause may still be alive in Parliament, no other MP has measured up to him because the government nearly collapsed of his vote.

Genocide: Planned House Vote on Armenian Massacre Angers Turks

From the New York Times

A planned vote in Congress that would classify the widespread killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish government early in the 20th century as genocide is threatening to make bilateral relations unusually tense.

The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, backs the resolution and at first wanted a vote in April. But under Turkish pressure, Bush administration figures have lobbied for the Democrats in charge of Congress to drop the measure.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sent strong letters of protest to her and to Representative Tom Lantos, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has not set a date for the vote. “That has had an impact,” said Lynne Weil, a Lantos spokeswoman, referring to the letters. Copies were also sent to Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader.

Turkey vehemently denies the genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians died during a period of several years, beginning in 1915. It contends that the deaths occurred in the chaos of war, as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and that many Turks were also killed when Armenians sided with Russian forces in the hope of claiming territory in eastern Turkey.

But many Armenians have sought acknowledgment from nations around the world that the deaths amounted to systematic genocide at Ottoman hands. So far, parliaments of more than 15 countries have agreed. France and Switzerland went further and called for criminal charges against those who deny it.

A vote in Congress would be purely symbolic, but Turks have warned that it would be felt as a bitter slap, and could cause enormous public pressure on the government in Ankara to chill its cooperation with Washington, which has strong military ties to Turkey, a NATO member.

In an effort to highlight Turkey’s opposition to a Congressional resolution, many high-ranking Turkish officials have visited Washington in recent months. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, one of them, says that the damage would be very deep if the resolution passed.

“It is only natural that the Turkish public who closely follow the issue would also react to this strongly,” Mr. Gul said in a telephone interview this week. “As the elected government of democratic Turkey, we would not be able to remain indifferent. However, I am confident that common sense would prevail at the Congress.”

In Turkey on Thursday, the government held an opening ceremony for a museum in a restored Armenian church near the city of Van in eastern Turkey that dates from the year 941 and is considered one of the most precious symbols of the Armenian presence in Anatolia. The renovation was undertaken as a major step to mend ties with Armenians.

Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice, in joint letters, spoke sympathetically of “the horrendous suffering that ethnic Armenians endured” and called for more study of the events. But they also noted that when the French National Assembly voted last year, the Turkish military responded by deciding to “cut all contacts with the French military and terminated defense contracts under negotiation.”

The letters, dated March 7, are posted at foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/

A similar reaction now by the Turkish government, the letters warned, “could harm American troops in the field” and constrain the American military in any number of ways.

Mr. Gates chose a meeting of the American-Turkish Council in Washington, a business group that promotes American-Turkish cooperation on trade, security and cultural matters, to make a major policy speech on Tuesday. Not only did he describe Turkey as an ally that “I have long believed to be undervalued and underappreciated,” but he made a point of arguing against the genocide resolution.

“Our two nations should oppose measures and rhetoric that needlessly and destructively antagonize each other,” Mr. Gates said Tuesday.

Daniel Fried, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, warned in testimony to Congress in mid-March that Turkish wrath could be so strong that Turkey might bar American access to Incirlik Air Base, in eastern Turkey, through which 74 percent of United States military air cargo destined for Iraq passes.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry also chided the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday for supporting a resolution that would condemn the killing in January of Hrant Dink, an editor who was a voice for ethnic Armenians in Turkey.

Asked about the warnings from the two administration officials, Representative Adam Schiff of California, a lead sponsor of the House resolution, said, “I don’t see how we can have the moral authority that we need to condemn the genocide going on in Darfur, if we’re unwilling to recognize other genocides that have taken place.”

Similar Congressional votes have been deferred in the past after intense lobbying. But with strong support for the resolution from Ms. Pelosi, and lingering resentment in Congress over Turkey’s refusal to let United States forces use Turkish soil for the invasion of Iraq, the bill’s prospects may have grown.

“It has 183 sponsors,” said Elizabeth Chouldjian of the Armenian National Committee of America. “It is very likely that if it came up for a vote right now, it would pass.”

Darfur: Sudan Says New U.S. Measures Will Backfire

From Reuters

U.S. plans to impose tough new measures against Sudan to force it to change course on Darfur will only threaten humanitarian agreements Khartoum has signed with the United Nations and fuel violence in the region, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

U.S. officials said Washington aimed to "tighten the screws" on Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and have him accept an international force in the western province.

"This will have negative repercussions. It will threaten agreements that we have reached with the United Nations and the African Union," said foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig.

Sudan, which has been accused of hindering humanitarian work in Darfur, signed a deal with the United Nations on Wednesday on giving aid groups more access to victims of the conflict in the region. It reiterated a pledge made in 2004 to take "fast track" measures such as quicker visas for aid workers.

Bashir has allowed African Union forces in Darfur but has refused to let U.N. troops in, saying that would amount to "foreign occupation."

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti made clear that he did not sign the humanitarian deal with the United Nations because of international pressure, signaling that Khartoum had no intention of bowing to the demands of the United States and other Western powers.

The United States had threatened an unspecified "Plan B" by January 1 if Bashir did not agree to a U.N./African Union force in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in what Washington says is this century's first genocide.

That deadline passed but it was Bashir's comments that he would not accept a hybrid force that pushed the administration to roll out "Plan B," senior officials said.

Khartoum denies the genocide allegations.

Aside from slapping travel and banking restrictions on at least three more Sudanese individuals, including a rebel leader, Washington also wants to put more pressure on splintered rebel groups in Darfur.

"You have to squeeze them all," said the defense official. "The goal is to get both Bashir and the rebels to come to the conclusion that they are not going to get anywhere with their current course of action."

Darfur: US to Unveil New Sanctions

From Reuters

The United States will impose tough new measures against Sudan, likely within days, to try to force it to change course on Darfur and aims to pressure Khartoum militarily by helping rebuild forces in the south, U.S. officials said.

State Department, Defense, Treasury and other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the goal was to "tighten the screws" on President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and have him accept an international force in the vast western province.

A White House announcement on sanctions and a further limit on dollar transactions was expected very soon, a State Department official said.

Military options like a no-fly zone over Darfur -- which Britain wants -- or a forced intervention have been ruled out for now, but the Pentagon has done some "back of the envelope" calculations on what might be needed, a defense official said.

Some Sudan experts said the new sanctions were too little, too late.

"This is the right idea but it is simply not enough and not multilateral enough to make an impact, a dent, in the calculations of the Sudanese regime," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group.

The United States had threatened an unspecified "Plan B" by Jan. 1 if Bashir did not agree to a U.N./African Union force in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in what Washington says is this century's first genocide.

That deadline passed but it was Bashir's comments that he would not accept a hybrid force that pushed the administration to roll out "Plan B," senior officials said.

The U.S. government is also looking at how to change the military equation in Sudan.

One tactic is to help the government in the south build a strong force out of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army which was at war with the north until a 2005 peace deal.

"If he (Bashir) is faced with a credible force in the south, he will start to relook at how his forces are dispersed and where his risks are," the defense official said.

But the initial focus will be on putting the financial squeeze on Bashir.

About 130 firms with ties to Sudan's government, including the two leading oil companies, are already on a U.S. sanctions list barring them from doing business with the United States or from using U.S. financial institutions to do dollar transactions -- the favored currency for lucrative oil trades.

Other companies will be added to the list, current sanctions will be tightened and existing loopholes closed, making it harder to do dollar deals.

"The goal is to be more pro-active and have tighter enforcement (of sanctions)," said a Treasury Department official.

Aside from slapping travel and banking restrictions on at least three more Sudanese individuals, including a rebel leader, Washington also wants to put more pressure on splintered rebel groups in Darfur.

"You have to squeeze them all," said the defense official. "The goal is to get both Bashir and the rebels to come to the conclusion that they are not going to get anywhere with their current course of action."

The United States is working closely with Britain, which takes over the presidency of the U.N. Security Council next month, and is planning a new resolution on Darfur.

But a senior U.S. official made clear the United States would not wait months for the United Nations to act.

Britain has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Darfur but the Pentagon sees that as fraught with problems, as it does a forced military intervention which would ostracize Arab nations still smarting from the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"When you look at a no-fly zone, the conclusion that pretty much everyone comes up with is that it will not have any impact at all," a defense official said.

With Sudan's limited number of fixed-wing aircraft, it would also be a logistical nightmare maintaining a no-fly zone in an area the size of Texas, the official said.

Darfur: Bashir Say No U.N. Troops

From the AP

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon tried to persuade Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur on Wednesday, hours after al-Bashir flatly rejected the deployment.

Ban met with the Sudanese president for more than three hours in late-night talks joined by Saudi King Abdullah and Arab League chief Amr Moussa on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi state news agency said.

Ban is seeking Arab help in winning al-Bashir's acceptance of a U.N. force to assist African Union peacekeepers who have been unable to halt the violence in the war-torn region.

In a small sign of cooperation, Sudan and the United Nations signed an agreement in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to ease humanitarian access to Darfur's refugees.

But in a speech earlier in the day at the Arab summit, al-Bashir underlined his objections to a 20,000-strong combined U.N.-AU peacekeeping force, saying the United Nations should only provide financial and technical help to African peacekeepers already on the ground.

Al-Bashir slammed U.N. resolutions calling for U.N. troop deployment in Darfur as "a violation for Sudan's sovereignty" and said they "provoke the conflict in Darfur, instead of finding a solution for it."

Chad: Refugee Crisis Becoming "Intolerable Burden"/Displaced Want UN Protection

From the AP

The new U.N. humanitarian chief warned Tuesday that refugees fleeing the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan could become an "intolerable burden" on the resources of neighboring Chad.

The violence in Darfur has been increasingly spreading from the region into Chad, with nomads raiding villages and clashes erupting between ethnic groups. Chad and Sudan have accused each other of supporting rebels groups involved in the attacks.

More than 2 million people live in refugee camps scattered over the vast arid region, while another 230,000 now live in refugee camps on the Chadian side of the border. Among those are 140,000 Chadians who lost their homes when their villages were destroyed.

"The camps could become an intolerable burden" on eastern Chad‘s scarce natural resources, he said. "We need to have an integrated approach to the whole region."

Aid workers in eastern Chad said they were coping with the refugees from Sudan, but they were more worried about the increasing numbers of Chadian ones.

Chadian authorities, who provide protection to the refugee camps and often share a common ethnic background with people fleeing Darfur, said they hoped Holmes‘ visit would help raise awareness to the crisis their region is facing.

From Reuters

Chadian civilians displaced by violence in the east appealed for United Nations military protection on Wednesday, but a top U.N. official said political solutions were needed to make peacekeeping effective.

Attacks in eastern Chad by armed raiders and inter-ethnic conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs have killed several hundred people in recent months and forced 120,000 from their homes.

"There is no security and we live in constant fear," Abderamane Adam Issa, a displaced villager living in a camp at Gouroukoum near Goz Beida in southeastern Chad, told Reuters during a visit by U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes.

Issa is among 12,000 civilians who occupy flimsy straw shelters dotted across a dust-swept valley.

[edit]

Local community leaders at Gouroukoum camp said the government in N'Djamena was not doing enough to protect them from armed Arab raiders on horseback, known as Janjaweed, who kill and rape civilians and loot and burn their villages.

"I would like to see the blue berets arrive," one such leader, Seid Ibrahim Mustafa, said after talks with Holmes.

The displaced civilians said they wanted U.N. peacekeeping troops to act as a barrier against the raids.

"If the Chadian government refuses to send a force we will be killed. It's that simple," Issa said, adding he and many others would flee to other countries if violence did not end.

Chad accuses neighbour Sudan of backing and promoting the attacks as part of a regional destabilisation strategy aimed at expanding its brand of Islamic rule into black Africa.

Khartoum denies this but is refusing to allow the U.N to deploy peacekeeping soldiers in Darfur.

Holmes, who had also visited Sudan, said political solutions to the interlocking conflicts in Darfur and Chad were essential to halt the bloodshed there.

"If a force could be put in place ... this is a good thing, but to have a force which is effective there must be a peace to maintain. This is a little bit missing on both sides of the border," he said.

The displaced villagers at the camp said they did not feel safe even there.

Gesturing towards the barren mountains which surround the valley, a man who only gave his first name, Ismail, said: "The Janjaweed are raping women, just a few kilometres (miles) away on the other side of the mountains".

Local leaders said that while non-Arab communities had suffered the brunt of Janjaweed attacks, Chadian Arabs were also fleeing persecution because people suspected them of collaborating with the raids.

"It's a complicated conflict," Holmes said.

He said the Chadian government ought to be doing more to protect the civilians and refugees in the east.

"It should be the government that provides the security but the reality is that they can't and they aren't," Holmes said.

Chad: Clan Feuds Creating Tinderbox of Conflict

From Reuters

Tit-for-tat killings between feuding rival ethnic clans are making Chad's eastern Dar Tama region a tinderbox of violence in a nation already racked by rebellion and cross-border raids from Sudan.

In December, a rebel leader from the Tama tribe rejoined the government side in a propaganda coup for President Idriss Deby, whose forces are battling multiple insurgencies in the desolate east bordering Sudan's violence-torn Darfur region.

But instead of bringing peace, the deal, which led to Tama rebel Mahamat Nour being named Chad's defense minister earlier this month, has stoked a historical feud between the Tamas and the Zaghawa clan to which Deby belongs.

Since December, dozens of people have been killed in attacks on villages around Dar Tama's key town, Guereda, in which homes are looted and sometimes destroyed and women are raped, analysts and foreign visitors to the region say.

Such is the mutual hatred between the clans, that some victims are being mutilated. Several of the Zaghawas killed are reported to have had their eyes gouged out.

"Dar Tama is Tama heartland," said Ahmat Mahamat Hassan, a political analyst at Abeche University in eastern Chad.

"But when Deby took power 16 years ago the Zaghawa occupied this land. They took control and behaved very violently towards the Tama, who were brutalised for many years."

"Now that Nour has rallied and the Tama are in control again, they are exacting revenge," Hassan told Reuters.

"It's the most dangerous area of Chad," one diplomat, who asked not to be named, said.

The situation in Dar Tama mirrors the intertwined ethnic conflicts that underpin the violence in east Chad and in Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in a war since 2003 between local rebels and Sudanese government forces.

Arab Janjaweed raiders from Darfur have also been marauding over the border into eastern Chad, slaying and looting.

While a precise toll from the Dar Tama feud is difficult to establish, observers say up to 70 Zaghawas and dozens of Tamas are believed to have been killed in recent months.

"It's tit-for-tat killings," said a foreign expert who has studied the ethnic violence in eastern Chad.

Darfur: Latest Pledge Raises "Partial" Hopes

From Reuters

The Khartoum government's latest promise of better cooperation with aid groups struggling in war-ravaged Darfur has eased the anxieties of the top U.N. humanitarian official in Sudan.

But an already overwhelmed Manuel da Silva warned of more crises ahead without a comprehensive political deal, including tribal fighting that is exacting a heavy death toll and complicating efforts to end the suffering.

The Sudanese government, which has been accused of hindering aid work in Darfur, signed an agreement with the U.N. on Wednesday, reiterating a promise made three years ago to take "fast track" measures to remove bureaucratic obstacles obstructing the world's biggest humanitarian effort.

Da Silva, Sudan's U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said he was encouraged because Khartoum spelled out what actions it would take.

"It is very specific, there is no vague language. I can give examples, it says 48 hours to issue visas. Stop, all over. On stay permits, for example, stay permits for the whole period of the moratorium (on free access), instead of every three months that we have today that is always a nightmare," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Explaining his concerns in the sprawling United Nations building in Khartoum, Da Silva said the deal could bring "partial" relief from troubles plaguing the Darfur relief effort, which requires more than 13,000 aid workers.

"It doesn't deal with other issues that are very important for our operation, like for example, security issues. Of course the situation in Darfur is still very dire when it comes to security issues," he said.

WHO IS WHO?

Aside from bureaucratic hurdles, aid groups face attacks by militias and rebels, as well as bandits who thrive on Darfur's chaos. Many workers have pulled out of areas in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

"We don't know who is who anymore," said Da Silva.

"I think we need to have a political solution in Darfur that is inclusive that brings everybody to the table. By having that political solution we will get improved security."

Recent clashes between the only Darfur rebel group to sign last year's peace agreement with the government and Sudanese security forces that killed at least 10 people suggest that won't be easy. The bloodshed was triggered by a traffic accident in the capital.

The former rebels have warned the peace pact could collapse if the government does not meet its demands in negotiations aimed at easing tensions after the fighting.

Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million fled their homes since the conflict flared in 2003 when rebel groups took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect. Khartoum says 9,000 people have died.

Darfuris say government-backed militias have killed, raped and pillaged in their villages. Khartoum says it has no ties to the militias and calls them outlaws.

U.N. officials say tribal bloodshed is now killing more people than fighting between Sudanese forces and rebels. Hundreds of people have died in the past few months.

The conflict has poured weapons into Darfur and eroded the authority of the local government, which acted as mediators between tribes, who number over 70, and are taking sides in the fighting.

Da Silva said traditional mechanisms of resolving tribal conflicts such as compensation are vanishing. Disputes which killed a few people have been replaced by heavy casualties.

"Now there are Kalashnikovs. There are heavy machine guns. There are RPGs. The father of a lady (in a dispute) goes to the other one and if he has an RPG he fires it and kills 20 people," said Da Silva.

A special U.N. unit dedicated to monitoring tribal developments has been established.

"It is very important that this tribal conflict does not get out of hand. Most of these recent clashes are between tribes that used to be neutral in this conflict," said Da Silva.

"The only solution is a comprehensive agreement that all ethnic groups in Darfur feel like they are a part of. It is urgent. We are running out of time."

Darfur: Arabs and U.N. Chief Press Sudan’s Leader

From the New York Times

The president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, came under pressure Thursday from Arab leaders to end the crisis in Darfur.

Mr. Bashir spent an hour and a half in a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and a two-hour session with him lasting into Thursday morning that included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia; Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League; and Alpha Oumar Konaré, chairman of the African Union.

“I think we made progress where there had been an impasse,” Mr. Ban said. “The king’s intervention very much supported my position.”

A United Nations official with experience in the region said: “These Arab discussions on Darfur are significant. There was a time when it was very difficult to raise the subject, but that’s no longer the case.”

In a speech to the opening session of the League of Arab States summit meeting, the usually defiant Mr. Bashir sounded a defensive note in trying to justify Sudan’s continuing resistance to the dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur.

“We assure you that we do not wish to have a confrontation with the international community,” he said.

He continued, however, to argue that the Security Council resolution calling for a joint African Union-United Nations force in his country posed “a violation of Sudan’s sovereignty and a submission by Sudan to outside custodianship.”

He also contended that outsiders would stir up more violence rather than reduce it.

[edit]

The United Nations official, who said he was not authorized to discuss closed-door meetings publicly, reported that the meeting’s participants made significant headway in formulating ways to end attacks on aid workers and to help those now cut off from assistance.

The talks also focused on the need to persuade dissident rebel groups to sign on to a cease-fire agreed to last year. Where they had less success, the official said, was in speeding the deployment of the joint peacekeeping force.

Mr. Bashir has argued that without full participation by all groups, he cannot fulfill a three-stage plan he agreed to last November that would send 3,000 United Nations military, police and civilian personnel along with logistical assistance to help the 7,000-member African Union force now on the ground and lead to an eventual 22,000-strong African Union-United Nations force.

Security Council ambassadors have predicted that the delay caused by Mr. Bashir’s resistance could put off the arrival of needed troops until next year.

Darfur: China Blasts Efforts to Link Olympics to Genocide

From the AP

China on Thursday blasted separate calls by a French politician and Mia Farrow to use the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games to pressure Beijing into doing more to stop the crisis in Sudan‘s Darfur region.

"It is a totally misguided approach for people to link the Darfur issue with the Games and try to tip the balance in their favor in order to enhance their own reputation," he said at a regular press briefing.

An editorial by Farrow published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday called on corporate sponsors of the Beijing Games to pressure China to do more to help stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

"There is now one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics ," said the editorial by the 62-year-old actress and U.N. goodwill ambassador.

Qin said he was not aware of who Farrow was and had not read the editorial.

Qin said he believed people who tried to link the Games with Darfur were unclear about China‘s policy on Sudan. He said China hopes "efforts by the international community could improve the humanitarian situation in Darfur and that the region could realize a lasting peace and stability."

A permanent member of the U.N. Security Council U.N. Security Council, China has come under increasing international pressure to use its influence over Khartoum to resolve the conflict, which erupted in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of neglect.

"We are confident that we will hold a successful and high quality Olympic Games in Beijing," Qin said.

Darfur: The 'Genocide Olympics'

An op-ed by Ronan and Mia Farrow in The Wall Street Journal

"One World, One Dream" is China's slogan for its 2008 Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn't be allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the Chinese-backed government of Sudan.

That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg -- who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies -- to sanitize Beijing's image. Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?

China is pouring billions of dollars into Sudan. Beijing purchases an overwhelming majority of Sudan's annual oil exports and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. -- an official partner of the upcoming Olympic Games -- owns the largest shares in each of Sudan's two major oil consortia. The Sudanese government uses as much as 80% of proceeds from those sales to fund its brutal Janjaweed proxy militia and purchase their instruments of destruction: bombers, assault helicopters, armored vehicles and small arms, most of them of Chinese manufacture. Airstrips constructed and operated by the Chinese have been used to launch bombing campaigns on villages. And China has used its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to repeatedly obstruct efforts by the U.S. and the U.K. to introduce peacekeepers to curtail the slaughter.

As one of the few players whose support is indispensable to Sudan, China has the power to, at the very least, insist that Khartoum accept a robust international peacekeeping force to protect defenseless civilians in Darfur. Beijing is uniquely positioned to put a stop to the slaughter, yet they have so far been unabashed in their refusal to do so.

But there is now one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That desire may provide a lone point of leverage with a country that has otherwise been impervious to all criticism.

Whether that opportunity goes unexploited lies in the hands of the high-profile supporters of these Olympic Games. Corporate sponsors like Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, General Electric and McDonalds, and key collaborators like Mr. Spielberg, should be put on notice. For there is another slogan afoot, one that is fast becoming viral amongst advocacy groups; rather than "One World, One Dream," people are beginning to speak of the coming "Genocide Olympics."

Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games? Do the various television sponsors around the world want to share in that shame? Because they will. Unless, of course, all of them add their singularly well-positioned voices to the growing calls for Chinese action to end the slaughter in Darfur.

Imagine if such calls were to succeed in pushing the Chinese government to use its leverage over Sudan to protect civilians in Darfur. The 2008 Beijing Olympics really could become an occasion for pride and celebration, a truly international honoring of the authentic spirit of "one world" and "one dream."

Darfur: Refugee Crisis Threatens to Overwhelm Chad

From the AP

Chadian officials expressed concern Tuesday at the growing number of refugees fleeing the conflict in neighboring Sudan, which the U.N. humanitarian chief feared could become an intolerable burden on the country.

John Holmes visited this eastern Chad town on the second leg of a 10-day trip to the region, one week after the new U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs visited Darfur and South Sudan -- part of an effort to improve the bitter conditions under which aid workers have to operate.

"The camps could become an intolerable burden" on eastern Chad's scarce natural resources, Holmes said.

Violence has increasingly been spreading from Darfur into Chad. Nomads are raiding villages, there are intricate ethnic clashes and both the Chadian and the Sudanese governments have been trading accusations that they support each other's rebels groups.

"But one big difference between here and Sudan is that at least here authorities are very cooperative," with the international aid effort, Holmes said after meeting Touka Ramadan Kore, the governor of this eastern Chad region. "Their humanitarian needs are so big that they are happy to have us in the country."

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur during four years of fighting between local rebels, the Sudanese army and their allied janjaweed militias. More than 2 million live in refugee camps scattered over the vast arid region, while another 230,000 now live in refugee camps on the Chadian side of the border.

But janjaweed raids and fighting by rebels along the 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border has also spread the crisis into Chad itself, and about 140,000 Chadians moved to the refugee camps after their villages were destroyed.

Holmes said he was aware there were situations where refugee camps offered better living conditions than surrounding villages, which was creating tensions.

"We need to have an integrated approach to the whole region," said Holmes. One of the things he talked about with local authorities was how to ensure natural resources such as water and firewood, along with international aid, were fairly shared by local villagers and refugees.

Aid workers in eastern Chad said they felt they were managing to cope with the refugees from Sudan, but were now more worried with the increasing number of Chadian ones.

"The trend is not going down, because insecurity is still increasing," Kingsley Amanin, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator in Abeche, said of the internally displaced. "It's worrying because we simply don't have the resources to help them right now."

Chadian authorities, who provide protection to the refugee camps and often share a common ethnic background with people fleeing from Darfur, said they hoped Holmes' visit would help raise awareness to the crisis their region is facing.

"Our relations with the U.N. is very good," said Guede Borgou, the chief of staff for eastern Chad's governor. He said he hoped Holmes' visit would further boost cooperation. "It comes at a time when we really need it," he said.

The Sudanese army bombed a border zone with Chad earlier this month and aid workers fear the flow of refugees will only increase.

The Security Council has made plans to deploy 11,000 U.N. peacekeepers along the border to protect refugees, but Chad's President Idriss Deby has seemed uncertain about his recent approval for a military component to the mission.

Holmes said his brief did not include discussions on the peacekeeping mission, but said that "deploying a force along the border is a priority" and hoped it would occur soon.

Darfur: Blair Pushing for No-Fly Zone

From The Guardian

Tony Blair is pushing the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced if necessary by the bombing of Sudanese military airfields used for raids on the province, the Guardian has learned.

The controversial initiative comes as a classified new report by a UN panel of experts alleges Sudan has violated UN resolutions by moving arms into Darfur, conducting overflights and disguising its military planes as UN humanitarian aircraft.

Mr Blair has been pushing for much tougher international action against Sudan since President Omar Hassan al-Bashir reneged earlier this month on last November's agreement to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur to protect civilians.

[edit]

Talks are under way in the UN security council over a package of sanctions being pushed by Britain and the US, which includes a comprehensive arms embargo and the freezing assets of Sudanese leaders implicated in the Darfur ethnic cleansing.

Speaking in Berlin on Sunday, Mr Blair described the situation in Darfur as "intolerable" and said: "We need to consider a no-fly zone to prevent the use of Sudanese air power against refugees and displaced people."

According to Downing Street, he is pushing for a no-fly zone to be passed at the same time as the new sanctions package, in the form of a 'Chapter 7' security council resolution, allowing the use of force.

"The prime minister believes we can do them together," said a Downing Street source. "There could be an agreement in the security council that there could be a no-fly zone. If the Sudanese government broke that agreement there would have to be consequences."

The imposition of a no-fly zone, of the kind employed over Iraq before the invasion, has been widely dismissed by military experts as impractical over an area as large as Darfur, which is the size of France. But the Guardian has learned that US and British officials are considering a cheaper alternative: punitive air strikes against Sudanese air force bases if Khartoum violated the no-fly zone.

The example being considered is the Ivory Coast, where the French wiped out much of the Ivorian air force while its planes and helicopters were sitting on the tarmac, in November 2004. The air strikes were in reprisal for the deaths of nine French peacekeepers in an Ivorian raid on rebel-held areas in the north.

Mr Blair's push for tough action is likely to be given a considerable boost by a new, still classified, report in New York by the UN's panel of experts on Sudan. According to an official who has seen the report, the panel found evidence that the Sudanese government was continuing to ship arms into Darfur and conduct air force operations over the province in violation of UN security council resolution 1591, passed two years ago.

The investigators also spotted an Antonov-26 aircraft painted white and parked at a military airport. "The panel noted with concern that the plane had a UN logo painted on the top of its left wing," a UN internal document said. "It was parked on the military apron next to rows of bombs."

The panel spotted another white Antonov at a military airport on March 1. The panel is "investigating the role of both aircraft in aerial bombing" of Darfur, the document said.

Downing Street has stressed that Mr Blair would prefer to act in concert with other security council members, but Sudan's defenders at the UN, led by China, are likely to resist any resolution backed by force. Asked whether the UK and the US would attempt to rally a 'coalition of the willing' against Sudan in the event of a security council impasse, a Downing Street source said: "We'd have to judge that if we failed." The initiative for such tough action is being driven by Mr Blair himself, often in the face of scepticism in the foreign office and ministry of defence.

The MoD in particular distanced itself from the idea yesterday, and said there were no plans for British forces to get involved.

"There are absolutely no plans for any UK military action at all in Sudan or the Darfur region of Sudan," a senior British defence source said yesterday, adding: "There are no plans on the radar".

But British military officials did not exclude the possibility that the US had contingency plans to strike Sudanese airfields.

Mr Blair is said by his aides to believe the ethnic cleansing to be a defining moral issue.

"It's very important [President Bashir] doesn't believe he can renege on his agreements. We can't allow the status quo to be locked in after the ethnic cleansing there," a Downing Street source said.

"The prime minister believes in a values-driven foreign policy and believes you have to evenly apply those values to have any credibility. He sees Darfur as a test of the international community's commitment to its own values."

The prospect of a no-fly zone was welcomed by the independent International Crisis Group thinktank yesterday. "The government in Khartoum is using its air force to bomb its own civilians and to resupply its troops and allied militias killing its own people. That's a pretty good reason for a no-fly zone," Andrew Stronheim, the ICG's media director, said.

Darfur: Envoy Says Sudan to Accept Peacekeepers

Whatever. We'll believe it when we see it - From the AP

Sudan's ambassador John Lueth Ukee said Tuesday that only minor issues stand in the way of his government's acceptance of a 22,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed in the violence-plagued Darfur region.

His comment contrasted sharply with a letter that President Omar al-Bashir had sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon earlier this month in which he rejected a significant U.N. troop commitment to Darfur.

"We have not backed down from what we said," Ukee said, alluding to commitments the Khartoum government made in support of the deployment at two U.N. backed conference last November.

He said his optimism about Sudan's acceptance of U.N. forces was based on discussions in recent days with top officials in Khartoum.

"The ministers said there are certain things we have to agree on that should be resolved in next few days," he said, speaking at a forum sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Public Policy.

[edit]

Large scale deployment of peacekeepers, under the U.N. plan, would follow initial preparatory phases. Ukee said his government has not stood in the way of implementing these stages. But, he said, U.N. inefficiency has blocked forward movement.

"They have done nothing," he said, adding that there are no limits on the number of peacekeepers government would allow.

U.S. and U.N. officials have said that a major problem, beyond resistance from the Khartoum government, has been a shortage of peacekeepers available for duty in Darfur.

Ukee blamed anti-government rebels in Darfur for the absence of a permanent peace after four years of strife.

He said that instead of rallying in support of a single leader to negotiate peace, the rebels have fragmented into a multiplicity of groups.

"Every other night a new one forms," he said. "A solution cannot come about under such circumstances."

Darfur: Searching For New Angles

A post by Andrew Stroehlein of the International Crisis Group on Reuters

I just finished a short round of meetings on Darfur with European journalists, and one thing that emerges over and over again is how desperate editors are for new angles on the issue. So, with the help of Reuters AlertNet, I would like to set up a contest to find new stories highlighting the issue.

The problem in getting more coverage for Darfur has never been finding journalists willing to cover it, and today -- as opposed to a couple years ago -- the problem isn't even convincing editors it's a critically important story. The difficulty is in finding new angles from which to cover the issue.

As one political editor of a major European newspaper told me last week:

"Look, we cover the UN any time there is movement, but on the ground, the story is just the same day after day: massive suffering, camps, horror stories..."

Even those personal stories that can be so much more effective than raw numbers are sounding like tired themes to some.

"We've walked around the camps already," another European editor said, "we've talked to rape victims, and we've done the child-who-watched-his-family-get-killed story. What else can we do?"

Cynical, yes, but for most outlets that's the news game: nothing new to report means, nothing new to report.

So, I've been spending a lot of my time pitching new ideas for stories, hoping to come across some angle they haven't done already. It's not easy after three years of Darfur coverage. For the last few weeks I've been pushing the EU angle: since April 2004, European foreign ministers have issued 19 General Affairs and External Relations Council conclusions statements on Darfur, announcing their collective "concern", "grave concern", "continued concern" or "deep concern" a total of 53 times.

But that's only one angle, and although we have spun it into a series of comment articles as well, it won't feed the news-hungry beast for very long.

And so, I am looking for our readers' ideas: what angles on the Darfur tragedy do you think the media in your country have not covered yet? What hasn't been done?

Maybe you are an aid worker with insight to something happening on the ground or a journalist who would love to cover one aspect of the story but cannot for whatever reason. Maybe you are a concerned citizen wondering why you are not watching and hearing more about Darfur in your national media.

We want to hear from everyone with a suggestion here in the comments section below. And feel free to make your comments anonymously if you need to. You can consider it a contest of a sort, I guess, though there are no prizes apart from immortal fame here on the blog and the satisfaction of doing a good deed: I'll forward the best ideas to key editors in your country and around the world to the best of my ability -- and to the extent of my contacts book.

Darfur: Sudan Top Target for Chinese Investment in Africa

From Reuters

The biggest target for Chinese investment in Africa is Sudan, the oil-producing country facing mounting international pressure over rights abuses in Darfur, according to figures released by a U.N. agency on Tuesday.

The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said Sudan received $351.5 million in Chinese direct investment in 2005, the latest period for which data was available, making it Beijing's ninth-largest target for such flows worldwide.

Sino-African trade nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2005 to $40 billion, and Beijing's direct investment rose to $1.6 billion as China sought access to African oil and other raw materials to feed its rapidly-expanding economy.

UNCTAD gave no breakdown of Chinese investment in Sudan. But according to other published reports, Beijing has helped build oil refineries, dams and roads in the northern African country.

[edit]

Most of China's investments in Africa have been funneled into manufacturing, natural resource extraction and construction services, including railways and roads that can help speed up raw materials shipments, according to the UNCTAD report.

It found that Chinese companies are present in 48 countries across Africa, but the continent still receives only 3 percent of China's overall foreign direct investments.

After Sudan, the biggest African recipients of Chinese direct investment in 2005 were Algeria with $171.2 million, Zambia with $160.3 million and South Africa with $112.3 million.

The Answer to Darfur

A new report from Enough [PDF here]

The international community cannot credibly claim to have done enough unless and until all measures have been employed to promote an effective and durable peace agreement, ensure the protection of civilians, and punish the perpetrators for their complicity in one of the worst crimes against humanity in the world today. But if these signs of change mark a new beginning, and if the United States, United Kingdom, ICC, and other significant actors rapidly follow these initial moves with more substantial actions, particularly through the U.N. Security Council, the horrors in Darfur can be brought to a swift conclusion.

Most importantly, President Bush has finally decided that the present course of U.S. policy is inadequate and must be buttressed by more robust measures. Unfortunately, dissent, disagreement, and interagency turf battles within the “Principals Committee” of leading cabinet secretaries mandated to deal with foreign policy continue to stifle the implementation of multilateral punitive measures that would, if pursued aggressively, alter the political calculations in Khartoum. The Principals have met six times in the past four months to discuss ways to ratchet up U.S. pressure on Khartoum, but most of the proposed policies have been rejected or watered down. Others, such as additional financial sanctions against Sudanese companies, will be irrelevant unless they are multilateral and the agencies tasked to carry them out devote significant resources to monitoring and enforcement, which in most cases would require additional resources for those agencies given competing demands.

The United States has had strong unilateral sanctions in place against Sudan since 1997, and the best way to isolate the perpetrators of mass atrocities in Darfur is intense diplomacy aimed at imposing similar measures multilaterally. It is unfortunate, not only for the United States but moreso for the victim’s of Khartoum’s policies, that the president’s request for a muscular policy response to mass atrocities in Darfur has not yielded the robust set of actions and high-level diplomacy that are so urgently required.

Hope and unrealized intent are insufficient to influence the Khartoum regime, and “Plan B,” as currently configured, is too little, too unilateral, and very, very late. In order to break the logjam on more meaningful action, President Bush must act decisively and instruct the Principals Committee to finalize a much more robust plan that ratchets up the pressure rapidly in response to continuing obstruction and destruction by Khartoum. Such a plan—which must be implemented multilaterally—would mark an important reversal from an approach that Khartoum has viewed as all bark and no bite. It would also reflect the fact that no single punitive measure in and of itself is likely to have much economic or legal impact, but the political impact of an array of measures that would steadily ratchet up the real pressure on Khartoum and gradually isolate regime officials as international pariahs would force a change in behavior in due course. Such pressures would aim to support a peace and protection initiative that would seek a new or significantly amended peace deal and a U.N./A.U. hybrid force focused on protecting civilian populations.

Ultimately, President Bush will have to decide that the United States must pursue multiple objectives in Sudan with singular intensity. Currently, counterterrorism efforts remain the unspoken elephant in the Situation Room (the room for Principals Committee meetings inside the White House) preventing a more robust U.S. policy. While Washington and its allies must continue to ensure that the Sudanese remain sources of information for the war on terrorism, they must merge this counterterrorism imperative with the equally compelling goals of ending the crisis in Darfur and ensuring the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for southern Sudan. Walking, chewing gum, and whistling at the same time are prerequisites for a successful policy in Sudan.

The stakes could not be higher. Time is running out for huge swaths of Darfur. Insecurity is increasing, and humanitarian access is shrinking rapidly. The State Department recently reported that a staggering 1,500 villages have been damaged or destroyed in Darfur. Mortality rates are set to skyrocket as the crisis metastasizes into Chad and the Central African Republic. Furthermore, the already shaky implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the government and the southern Sudan-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement is increasingly at risk because of profound disagreements over what to do about Darfur between the ruling party and the SPLM. Perhaps most ominously, recent withdrawals of aid personnel—in response to targeted violence—threaten to result in widespread famine and increased epidemics, as well as much more violence as the last external witnesses are removed from the scene.

If there was a Sudan Study Group like that of Iraq, composed of relevant experts on Sudan and broader crisis-response approaches, such a group would presumably start by examining the historical context of conflict in the country to establish lessons learned from previous efforts at changing the Sudanese regime’s behavior. It would then construct a set of proposals that would build on those historical lessons, taking full advantage of all available tools in the crisis-response toolbox.

Sadly, no such energy or analytical attention is being focused on Sudan. Illustratively, a U.S. diplomat deeply involved in Sudan policy said recently, “The U.S. doesn’t have to understand the dynamics of the Sudan; we just need to help them move forward.” Disinterest in history leads to its repetition, as we are seeing in Darfur, where all the mistakes that were made for years by the international community in the deadly southern Sudanese war are being made again. Willful ignorance results in bad policy, and costs lives.

American and other policy-makers are ignoring Sudan’s own recent history, and thus the bulk of the most potentially effective policy instruments are still on the shelf. This paper outlines three highly relevant historical lessons, and puts forward a comprehensive policy that brings together all of the available tools in a unified framework focused on promoting peace, protecting people, and punishing perpetrators, the “3 P’s” of confronting atrocities.

Ultimately, U.S. policy won’t change sufficiently without more effective grassroots citizen pressure. Doubtless, the growing citizens’ movement across the United States is the reason Darfur is on the political map in the first place. However, the cacophony of voices, ideas, and opinions about what to do is deafening, and at times the multitudes cancel each other out because of the lack of coordination and clarity around the way forward. The hope is that as Darfur advocates across the United States pursue their individual agendas and projects—all of which are crucial for raising awareness and applying pressure on our elected officials—they will also become better informed about what would really make a difference and in turn will increase their advocacy on the specific U.S. actions necessary to end the crisis in Darfur.

This strategy paper lays out these required actions, arguing that no single initiative will be sufficient for success. All six sides of the following policy Rubik’s Cube must align and be pursued simultaneously by the international community, led by U.S. policy-makers in the executive and legislative branches and citizen activists:

1. Support rebel unity

2. Build an effective peace process

3. Secure full-time, high-level U.S. diplomacy

4. Accelerate military planning and action for protection

5. Impose punitive measures now

6. Ramp up global citizen activism

Once the recent policy history is reviewed and the real lessons learned from the 18 deadly years this regime has been in power, the answers become clear and obvious. Only the elusive ingredient called political will remains missing.

Darfur: Fleeing the Janjaweed

A piece by Jody Williams in The Independent

Another of the 30 women told me her story. When her village was attacked, four women were isolated by a group of the attackers - she was one of them. Some of the men began to beat her with their guns as others took the oldest woman in the group and threw her into a fire and burned her to death. The two youngest women of the four were raped - over and over again - while the husband of one them was killed before her eyes. She became pregnant and since the baby was born - it "died immediately" (some say infanticide is rampant in such circumstances) - she has been unable to move from her bed.

And these are only a handful of the stories I heard this February as I headed a six-member "High Level Mission" for the UN's Human Rights Council. We were to make an assessment of the situation in Darfur and what was needed to deal with the acute crisis there, and report back to the 47-member Council in March. Despite the complete lack of cooperation by the government in Khartoum, we were able to complete our work and I presented our report to the council on 15 March.

Khartoum made every attempt to derail our Mission. Even though Sudan's President Bashir had personally assured the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, that we would be given full cooperation and assistance, predictably Bashir's words were hollow. From the moment our mission came together on 5 February, Khartoum began manoeuvres to block our entry into Darfur. We tried a dozen times over 20 days to get visas to go to Sudan, but they were never issued.

Sudan tried every trick to try to stop us from leaving Geneva, but we left as scheduled for meetings with the African Union - which has a protection force in Darfur - in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we still hoped Sudan would relent and give us visas. The visas never came, and we went on to Chad, where we heard the horrific stories of some of the 230,000 refugees from Darfur.

The Darfur rebels we also met with in Chad were adamant that peace would not come to the region unless Khartoum re-opened negotiations on the "Darfur peace agreement", signed the previous May by the government and only one of the rebel groups.

Instead of bringing peace and security to Darfur, the "peace agreement" has only fueled the war. Khartoum has used that agreement to go after the rebels that refused to sign. When the rebel groups began attacking government forces there in 2003, the government stepped up recruitment and arming of proxy militias, the "Janjaweed", to fight the rebels in Darfur. With its soldiers tied up in South Sudan in the ongoing fighting of the 20-year war there, it needed militias because most of the rank and file soldiers are from Darfur, and Khartoum was not confident that those soldiers would attack their own people.

Khartoum's counter-insurgency war in Darfur has primarily targetted civilians - mostly the tribal groups that the rebels are from. Now using the peace agreement to go after the non-signatory rebel groups, Khartoum has done more recruiting for its militias, as well as increasing their lethality with more sophisticated weapons.

The rebel groups have become increasingly fragmented as the war continues, and as hard as it is to imagine, the human rights situation has deteriorated dramatically. Today, about 2.5 million people are displaced inside Darfur, well over 200,000 are dead (some say that number is as high as 450,000), and the conflict is spilling over the borders into Chad and the Central African Republic. In the last six months of 2006 alone, the number of displaced Chadians rocketed from 30,000 to over 113,000 as the Janjaweed began cross-border attacks into Chad.

Making matters worse, humanitarian relief organisations are increasingly restricted and can no longer reach some of the hundreds of thousands of people that they were helping stay alive. Humanitarian and human rights workers have been increasingly attacked, and in a couple of those attacks have been seriously beaten and raped. In 2006, 12 relief workers were killed during attacks. It is a situation where chaos and violence have greatly increased criminality and the rise of violent gangs.

No matter who I talked to, what everyone wanted most was "protection" and "security". More than food, more than water, more than going home. And when asked who could protect them, the overwhelming majority responded, "The United Nations."

As I kept hearing that over and over, I kept thinking about the lofty principle of "the responsibility to protect". If the people of Darfur need protection, whose responsibility is it to provide it? Who is failing in that responsibility?

Darfur: Red Tate Imperils Aid Effort

From the New York Times

It was supposed to be a top United Nations official’s first visit to a camp for Darfur residents chased from their homes by the grim conflict here, but it did not begin or end well.

John Holmes, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, had come to Darfur to see the world’s largest aid effort in action — a nearly $1 billion-a-year operation involving about 14,000 aid workers helping 3.8 million people dependent on handouts of food, medicine and water.

But he did not get very far. He was turned back by soldiers at a military checkpoint on the road to the Kassab refugee camp in North Darfur, despite high-level assurances from the Sudanese government that he would be given unimpeded access to Darfur’s dispossessed.

“I find this quite extraordinary,” Mr. Holmes said as he stood on the dusty spot of his rejection. “We’ve come to visit a camp where the U.N. system is keeping people alive and we are not allowed access. It is quite an incredible event and I am quite frustrated and angry.”

Violence and bureaucracy are threatening to derail what has been perhaps the only success of the Darfur conflict: the humanitarian effort. For the past four years, Darfur has been a place of bloodshed and banishment, with at least 200,000 killed and more than 10 times as many pushed from their villages into camps and the wilderness by soldiers, pro-government militias and, more recently, clashes between rebel groups.

These people have been kept from dying in the arid moonscapes of Darfur by the aid effort — thousands of workers for dozens of agencies from Sudan and abroad who swiftly set up camps, dug wells and latrines, and handed out food. Those actions helped to slash death and malnutrition rates among the displaced, put hundreds of thousands of children in classrooms and give millions basic health care.

But now that effort is in peril, aid officials in Darfur say. In the past year, a dozen aid workers have been killed, dozens of vehicles stolen, compounds robbed and workers beaten, harassed and sexually assaulted. A United Nations map of a no-go area, where conditions are too dangerous for workers, shows a shrinking arena of operations, with wide swaths of territory off limits. More than 900,000 people are living or hiding in those areas.

Here in Deribat, a rebel-held town in the Jebel Marra mountains, help can arrive only by helicopter because government officials have closed off the road.

“They are strangling us,” said Ali Adam, a medical assistant who runs a clinic in Deribat, adding that 21 children have died here in the past three weeks of pneumonia because they have no antibiotics. “We are under siege.”

In other places, like Gereida, a vast camp of 130,000 people in a rebel-controlled area, violence has forced almost all aid workers to retreat. In December, armed men raided an aid organization compound, raping two women and stealing cars, satellite phones and computers.

Even in the areas supposedly within reach of relief organizations, like Kassab, bureaucratic stonewalling by the government keeps aid workers out much of the time. Aid agencies say their operations are tied in endless ribbons of red tape. Rather than being chased from the country by violence they are more likely to lose heart from the endless bureaucracy — a slow death by a thousand paper cuts.

“Many organizations are saying that the bureaucratic obstacles are the No. 1 problem and may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” said one senior aid official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

The mountains of paperwork — including trips to government ministries to obtain official stamps and permissions for visas, travel permits and import tax exemptions — take up so much time that one large aid organization with operations across Darfur employs five full-time workers whose only job is to navigate the bureaucratic maze.

The government signed an agreement with the United Nations in 2004 that eliminated most restrictions on aid workers. But that agreement has been repeatedly violated: a United Nations list of incidents compiled in the first two months of the year cited more than two dozen cases of workers being forced off aid flights, turned back at checkpoints or denied paperwork and visas.

Visas are issued for a few months at a time, if at all. Exit visas are required for workers staying more than a month, but these, too, can take weeks to come through and cost $120 each. The cost of a single worker’s paperwork can add up to $1,000 a year.

Government officials say they are not obstructing aid workers and have lived up to the agreement to allow free access.

“The procedures are created so as to make it easy, not make it difficult,” said Kosti Manibe, Sudan’s humanitarian affairs commissioner.

In the case of Mr. Holmes, government officials later apologized and said the episode, which escalated to include the seizure of a videotape from a United Nations cameraman, was a misunderstanding. But the symbolism was inescapable.

“It is clearly a reflection of the difficulties ordinary aid workers face every day,” Mr. Holmes said. “If there were one big incident, the humanitarian effort could collapse, and if that happened, you would have a serious humanitarian catastrophe.”

Darfur: Ex-Rebels Warn Peace Deal Could Collapse

From Reuters

Former Sudanese rebels warned on Tuesday that a peace agreement signed last year is in danger of collapsing if the government rejects its demands following clashes that killed at least 10 people.

Eight members of the rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), and two Sudanese police officers were killed in the clashes on Saturday in the city of Omdurman, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Sudan's capital Khartoum.

The SLM was the only one of three Darfur rebel negotiating factions to sign the deal with the government in 2006.

The SLM is pressing for the release of 93 of its members it said were arrested after the clashes, the return of the bodies of those killed and the withdrawal of heavily-armed government security forces still surrounding its headquarters in Omdurman.

"It is obvious what will happen if our demands are not met," said SLM spokesman al-Tayyib Khamis. "This would endanger the peace deal. We may have to reconsider our position."

After the peace deal, SLM leader Minni Arcua Minnawi became a senior assistant to the president with special responsibilities for Darfur. But he has complained the dominant National Congress Party (NCP) lacks political will to implement the peace accord.

The fighting broke out on Saturday when police surrounded the SLM headquarters, the state-run Sudanese Media Centre said. It said the SLM had refused to hand over to authorities members involved in a traffic accident two days earlier.

Khamis said police ignored the SLM's attempts to resolve the problem peacefully and "fired the first bullet."

Sudanese security forces backed by armoured personnel carriers and vehicles with mounted machineguns have closed off streets leading to the SLM headquarters. They refused to answer questions about the incident and said journalists were barred from asking residents to describe what happened.

A Western diplomat said the incident was "very serious" but he believed that both sides were trying to "put a lid on it".

The clashes occurred on the same day a senior SLM commander was killed in southern Darfur in an attack the SLM blamed on the government, and the first visit to Sudan by the new United Nations humanitarian chief John Holmes, who wants Khartoum to ease bureaucratic obstacles hindering aid groups in Darfur.

Chad/Sudan: Air Strikes and Armed Raids Underscore Concern for Security

From UNHCR

We are very concerned by recent insecurity in areas surrounding some of our refugee camps in eastern Chad. On Sunday, immediately following a visit to Kounoungou refugee camp by President Idriss Deby Itno – during which he promised to improve security in the region – armed men raided a market close to the camp and beat several refugees. The incident appears to have been between two tribal groups. At least five men and nine women were assaulted. Some of them were transported to the hospital in Guereda, the nearest town, for treatment of head injuries. Kounougou camp hosts over 13,000 refugees from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan.

Last Thursday, a plane described by witnesses as a Sudanese Antonov, bombed areas north and south of the north-eastern Chadian town of Bahai. The air strikes included the area around Lake Cariari, several kilometres from the Oure Cassoni refugee camp. Oure Cassoni hosts nearly 27,000 Sudanese refugees. While no refugees were injured, several Chadian civilians and two humanitarian workers from an international NGO were wounded. This is not the first time that air strikes have occurred near Oure Cassoni, which is only 5 km from the Sudanese border. Air strikes were reported over a two-day period in early January 2007 and in October 2006. UNHCR has been seeking agreement from the refugees and Chadian authorities to move the camp further from the border.

These two recent incidents again highlight the precariousness of the security situation in the region for refugees, for displaced Chadians, for the local population and for humanitarian workers.

Darfur: Rebels Say Lack of Preparation Prevented Meeting

From The Sudan Tribune

Darfur rebel group regretted that Sudanese First Vice-President had visited the neighboring Chad without prior consultation to arrange a meeting with him.

The National Redemption Front (NRF) regretted in a statement Monday the “inability” to meet the Sudanese First Vice President Salva Kiir Mayadrit during his visit to Chad on March 20-21.

In a press statement, the rebel group said this “opportunity was missed due to poor preparation for the meeting and lack of information prior to the visit.”

Salva Kiir met with the Chadian president Idriss Deby and Ahmed Ibrahim Diraig, leader of the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA). While Khalil Ibrahim the leader of the Justice and Equality was in Abéché near the Sudanese border.

He invited Darfur rebel groups to meet next month in Juba for “All-Darfur Conference”. “The Conference is to build consensus and a common political stand on critical issues that would be the basis for a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Darfur.” Salva Kiir announced in the donors conference in Juba last week.

The NRF expressed appreciation to the role played by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to end Darfur crisis. Darfur rebel group said it “looks forward to meeting them at the earliest opportunity.”

“The NRF takes it for granted that solid alliance with the SPLM is crucial for finding peace in Darfur as well as for realising Dr. Garang’s dream of New Sudan.” The NRF said.

Darfur: Even in Hell

A post by Ann Curry on MSNBC

The little girl, maybe 6 years old, was shoeless in the scorching sand. I looked closely at her feet, struck by how old they appeared, wrinkled and calloused gray, and it occurred to me, she’s probably never worn a pair of shoes.

I saw her near Nyala, in Sudan’s Darfur region, in a camp for displaced people called al-Salam, Arabic for peace, it is a place surrounded by war.

Now, 700 camps like this one dot Darfur, and the majority of the people in them are children. Glimpsing a brand new baby in one camp, when the wind caught the fabric of her mother’s headdress, I wondered how one keeps a child alive in this hell.

[edit]

When the history of Darfur’s tragedy is written, the outside world may see it as a firestorm sparked by politics, fanned by a thirst for resources on a tinder of long-forgotten ethnic tensions.

Like most wars, this one too has lost meaning and clarity as the violence spirals. Now, the government is fighting several rebel groups and appears to have lost control of some of the Arab militiamen within its ranks. There are even reports of Arabs attacking Arabs and blacks attacking blacks.

Stuck in the middle of this horror is Darfur’s future -- these children who, along with their parents, are experiencing a kind of suffering that traumatizes.

They are the first to draw near to you, an alien with your clean clothes and Thuraya satellite phone. Looking at them standing there, dirty and hungry, their clothes in tatters, you wonder what hope there is for them and for the future of Darfur. Then you realize, they are looking at you for something to make them smile. And so you try and BOOM! You discover that even in hell, a child can laugh.

Darfur: Pronk Blasts Sudanese Government

From The Tufts Daily

Former Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Sudan Jan Pronk addressed previous failures in the country and called upon the international community to take more action in a Charles Francis Adams Lecture last night.

The talk, originally to be held in Mugar 200, was moved to a bigger lecture room in Fletcher due to unexpectedly large attendance.

Pronk, who held his position from 2004 to 2006, was expelled by the Sudanese government, based in the capital of Khartoum, after he publicly criticized it on his blog. Last night, he had some harsh words for the way the international community has handled the turmoil in Sudan.

"Everything went wrong right from the beginning and everyone is responsible," he said.

Despite previous peace talks, Pronk said that "the current situation is bleak. There is no peace."

[edit]

According to Pronk, the international community is pouring a lot of money into relief efforts in Darfur and southern Sudan, but these contributions are temporary fixes rather than permanent solutions.

Still, they have led to many positive results and have provided "care for human beings," which Pronk described as a "scarce commodity" in Sudan.

One of Pronk's criticisms of the Khartoum regime is that leaders lack this compassion. "They have a total disregard for their own people," he said.

According to Pronk, the Sudanese government aids the Janjaweed through indirect means, such as plane bombings, which make villages more susceptible to attacks. The government, however, denies that it is involved, he said.

"The government is a regime which uses power and violence in order to stay in power," he said. The benefits reaped are concentrated in Khartoum, creating drastic wealth disparities throughout the country.

"Khartoum is booming. The middle class is benefiting a lot but nothing is invested in the south, the east or in Darfur," he said. "Inequality is growing within the Sudanese population and their policy is to continue that, to keep the status quo."

In terms of the United Nations, Pronk said there is ample talk followed by minimal action. "They talk about genocide, about what has to happen, but there are never any answers."

Pronk attributes the blame for the ongoing genocide to the rest of the world as well. "In my opinion, the world is partly guilty" he said.

Despite an early awareness of the situation in Darfur, the U.N. Security Council at first remained uninvolved. "They did not want to put it on the agenda," he said. "People knew exactly what was taking place but they didn't want to take action."

Though intervention was delayed and remains unsuccessful on the whole, the United Nations has rendered some changes in the situation. According to Pronk, the United Nation's decision to finance a protective military sent to Darfur by the African Union was particularly helpful.

Further United Nations intervention efforts are met with resistance due to the regime's manipulation of public opinion against outside aid. "The government told people that this is all a ploy to re-colonize Sudan," he said. "The story was that the U.N. is the U.S.

"It was a difficult situation," he said. "Proposals were only oriented towards intervention and there was no government acceptance."

The government, he said, has violated peace agreements which already did not have enough force because not enough parties entered into them.

According to Pronk, much of the resistance in Sudan stems from the ways in which world viewpoints have shifted against Western culture, changing the dynamics of international relations.

"There is cultural polarization with justified claims that human rights are being violated. Countries are now taking sides," he said. This has "paralyzed international decision making."

Pronk, however, is not without hope for the future. "There are a number of options that have not been used," he said.

Achieving unity among the North and the South is high on Pronk's list of precursors of peace.

Creating favorable conditions in the South "so they would see improvement and continue to rely on unity," is the best solution, he said. This, however, is contingent on gaining the trust of the regime in Khartoum. "They will only do so if they don't fear the North," he said.

He cited more pressure from the outside as one important mechanism of change.

"We should not be guilty by negligence again," he said. "We need to constrain the possibilities of the regime to further deteriorate the situation."

On the whole, Pronk advocates less talk, and more action. "We have to be very alert about the situation. Not only sit, talk, accuse and do nothing.

"I hope the International community will put Darfur and Sudan as a whole much higher on the international agenda," he said.

Sudan: Former Foes Renew Commitment to Peace

From AFP

Sudan's two main governing parties have renewed their commitment to peace and vowed never to resume the north-south war that plagued Africa's largest country for two decades.

President Omar al-Beshir's National Congress and First Vice President Salva Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) made the pledge late Monday after a three-day meeting of their leaderships.

"Both parties pledge to implement the peace deal and never to revert to war for whatever reason," said a joint statement.

Beshir's party and the former rebel SPLM signed a peace deal in January 2005 ending a 21-year civil war that had left around 1.5 million people dead and four million displaced.

The former foes then joined forces in a national unity government but tension has simmered since as implementation of some major points of the peace agreement has fallen behind schedule.

The statement said both parties vowed "to resort to dialogue to overcome the challenges they face in implementing the peace deal."

The agreement's provisions on wealth-sharing have been paricularly contentious and the signatories remain at odds over the fate of some oil-rich areas straddling the north-south border.

The four-year-old violence in the western region of Darfur has also driven a wedge between the governing coalition partners.

While Beshir -- whose regime stands accused of genocide by Washington over Darfur -- has always rejected any UN intervention, Kiir's SPLM has openly said it would welcome UN troops.

Beshir has also been adamant he would not comply with a demand by the International Criminal Court to bring Darfur war crimes suspects to justice, while some members of the SPLM adopted a more conciliatory tone.

Monday's joint statement said both sides promised to "step up efforts to find a solution to the Darfur problem, which is a priority issue."

Rwanda: Militia Leader Preyed on Tutsis

From the Globe and Mail

Before seeking asylum in Canada in 1997, a club-wielding Désiré Munyaneza led a militia death squad that preyed on ethnic Tutsi refugees in Rwanda, killing the men and forcing the women into sexual slavery, a witness to the alleged crimes told a Montreal court yesterday.

When he wasn't manning a roadblock to pluck Tutsis out of the traffic, Mr. Munyaneza ran a bawdy house where armed thugs raped Tutsi women several times a day during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, said the 30-year-old woman, who may not be identified out of fear of reprisals.

At the height of the massacre, the 40-year-old father of two clubbed a Tutsi boy to death and raped a Tutsi woman, she said.

"At nights, armed with a club, he would go around getting young men from the crowd because the young men were the first ones to get killed," she said.

The woman's testimony set off Canada's first trial for genocide and war crimes, a case that is garnering international media coverage and will summon witnesses from five countries to Montreal over the coming months.

Mr. Justice André Denis of Quebec Superior Court has already travelled to Rwanda to hear 17 witnesses testify. Judge Denis will hear from 12 more Rwandans as well as five other experts, including Senator Roméo Dallaire, who led the ill-fated United Nations mission to Rwanda.

The trial is also seen as a test of Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, as Mr. Munyaneza is the first person to be charged under the law passed by Parliament in 2000.

Genocide: Armenian Resolution May Not Go To Congress

From NTV MSNBC

The chances of the US Congress voting on a resolution formally recognising allegations that the Ottoman Empire committed an act of genocide against its Armenian citizens was receding, according to Turkey’s Economy Minister.

Ali Babacan, who is the Turkish State Minister responsible for the Economy and Ankara’s chief European Union said Monday it was now less likely that a resolution on Armenian genocide allegations would come to the floor of the US Congress.

“Things looked extremely dark two months ago but thanks to the efforts exerted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the staff at our Washington Embassy, as well as our lawmakers and non-governmental organisations, I see better chances that the resolution would not be submitted to the Congress,” Babacan said in Washington after attending the 26th annual conference of the Turkish American Council.

From Today's Zaman

While Turkish officials who gathered in Washington to attend a conference expressed hope that the Armenian genocide resolution pending in the US Congress would not pass, the US ambassador showed support.

"Everything has been said already, God willing, the resolution won't pass," said Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Ergin Saygun, who attended a reception at the Turkish Embassy in Washington prior to the opening of the annual conference on US-Turkish relations organized by various business associations led by American-Turkish Council's (ATC) to promote commercial and cultural relations between the two countries.

"We don't want this resolution to pass," said Ross Wilson who is the US ambassador to Turkey, attending the reception in Washington, adding that the US administration would not change its stance no matter how the US Congress acted on the resolution.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, with a letter sent to senior members of Congress, indicated the damage that Turkish-US ties could suffer if the pending resolution on Armenian claims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks was passed.

[edit]

The US and Turkey share mutual interests and improve global wealth together has expressed US President George W. Bush, in a message sent yesterday for the opening of the ATC conference. He also expressed gratitude for the Turkish-Americans' contribution to the American culture.

From Turkish Daily News

As Turkish and U.S. government and military officials and businessmen kicked off an annual two-day conference on U.S.-Turkish ties with the mood overshadowed by a pending "Armenian genocide," Congress further upped the ante with announcement that a separate resolution may soon be voted condemning the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January.

The talk Monday was mainly on the fate of Armenian genocide legislations pending in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, whose passage certainly would hit the bilateral relationship.

"Everything has been said. I hope it doesn't pass," said Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff, at a Sunday reception at the Turkish Embassy here opening the 26th annual U.S.-Turkish conference. The meetings, known as the ATC conference, are held jointly by the American-Turkish Council (ATC), a group of mainly U.S. companies doing business with Turkey, and the Turkish-U.S. Business Council.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt have visited Washington in recent weeks to lobby against the Armenian measures.President George W. Bush's administration also opposes the resolutions, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently urging Congress leaders to drop the measure. The Bush administration says the legislations' congressional approval will harm U.S. national interests. The two resolutions pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate call for recognition of World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. It is not clear if or when they would be discussed and brought to a vote in either chamber.

In a related development, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee is planning to vote on Wednesday another resolution condemning Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink's murder and calling on Turkey to abolish a penal code article blamed for restricting freedom of expression and to launch diplomatic, political and trade ties with Armenia, according to the panel's Web site.

That legislation was originally planned for vote on March 6, but the committee's ranking Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who generally backs Turkey in Congress, objected to the measure's language, causing a delay of three weeks.Turkey indeed prefers if the resolution does not pass the Senate at all, but is particularly concerned over a reference to the term "Armenian genocide" in themeasure's background section.

Ankara fears that a Senate approval of the original text may act as a precedent for future congressional action.

Although President George W. Bush's administration, which has strongly condemned Dink's assassination, would like to see Turkey repeal the penal code's controversial Article 301 and set up good relations with Armenia, it also shares Ankara's worries over the resolution's reference to the Armenian genocide. So the administration is seeking to persuade the panel's senators to drop that reference, diplomats said.

For their part U.S. Armenian groups are putting pressure on the panel's members to keep the resolution's original language intact.

Acting on Lugar's objection on March 6, the committee's Democratic chairman, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, the resolution's sponsor, delayed the vote until the panel's next business meeting.

The committee's Web site announcement said the resolution on Wednesday would be brought to a vote with amendments, but did not say what the amendments were. It was not clear whether the Armenian genocide reference would stay in the text.In addition to Saygun, the ATC conference's top speakers will include Economy Minister Ali Babacan and Gates.

The Bush administration is seeking to assure the Turks that even if the genocide resolutions pass, Washington's policy on Turkey would not change.

"At the end of the day, the U.S. policy will not change regardless of what Congress does on this," U.S. ambassador to Ankara Ross Wilson told reporters at the ATC reception. "We would like to see the resolution not pass."

Darfur: ICC Can't Quiz Official

From AFP

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir refused on Monday to have a top official suspected by the International Criminal Court of Darfur war crimes questioned or sacked, in a new tirade against the tribunal.

Ahmed Haroun, the current secretary of state for humanitarian affairs, "will not resign or be fired and will not be interrogated," Beshir told the independent daily Al-Sudani.

The president's remarks came after last week's announcement by Sudan's general prosecutor that Haroun would be questioned over crimes in the troubled western Sudanese region, despite having been earlier cleared of any wrongdoing by the Sudanese judiciary.

"The former secretary of state for interior was only performing his duty to defend the citizens and their property from the aggressors at the time of the events (in 2003-2004)," Beshir said.

Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol echoed the president's comments at an Arab ministers' meeting in Riyadh.

"The international tribunal has no right to put any Sudanese citizen on trial," said Akol.

"Sudan's position is to not hand over any Sudanese citizen to a non-Sudanese party, even if he is one of those who carry arms against the government."

In February, ICC prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo accused Haroun and a local militia leader of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes - including murder, torture and mass rape.

Khartoum reacted to the ICC's move by insisting that its judiciary was fully competent to handle the cases, rejecting the legitimacy of any foreign court to try Sudanese nationals.

Beshir described the ICC's decision as "cheap political bargaining and a way to impose UN security council resolutions on Sudan."

He said co-operating with the ICC would amount to "helping the enemy to dismantle the country and to hit at its stability."

Darfur: For Villages, Bombs More Likely Than Aid

From Reuters

The sound of aircraft can only mean two things for the people of this isolated Darfur mountain village. Either it's Sudanese government bombers or the rare arrival of helicopters carrying humanitarian supplies.

Government forces closed off the main supply route to rebel-held Deribat five months ago, residents say, isolating an area vulnerable to multiple front lines that have driven away humanitarian organisations.

Deribat, one of the main villages in the southeast of the Jebel Marra region, welcomed the new United Nations humanitarian chief on Sunday during his Darfur tour aimed at winning aid groups more access to victims of the conflict.

After the children stopped singing and hospitable local leaders shook his hand, the magnitude of the task ahead soon became apparent to John Holmes, the U.N.'s under-secretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Mothers with infants in their arms cried out for medicine. Others feared their children would be robbed of an education. Holmes was shown water pumps in the village, which could dry up if maintenance supplies were not flown in.

But aid groups say it is too dangerous to operate in Jebel Marra, where humanitarian workers have been targeted by militias, including an incident last year in which uniformed Arab militias beat four NGO workers while their international female colleague was sexually assaulted.

The last two remaining aid groups left the area in August.

"You can't just drop medicine from the air," said an aid worker, who asked not to be named. "We look for windows of opportunity to help out. Many humanitarian agencies have fled rural areas and this has severe consequences."

Deribat's fate depends on orders given to soldiers manning a checkpoint on the main road to the village once used to deliver medicine and other vital goods.

"We hope the government will open the road, we can't survive like this," said Sharif Ahmed, 38, standing below jagged hills that only lead to desert.

There is only one way to gauge the government's mood. Villagers say they have to walk three hours in the stifling heat to see whether there are any changes at the checkpoint, risking attacks along the way.

Holmes told local officials he would raise the issue with Sudanese officials but he said he didn't want to make "any false promises".

For now, Deribat's 80,000 people must rely on tough-talking rebels to protect them from Sudanese forces, like the ones they said carried out an air raid last month, killing three civilians, including a 5-year-old child. Arab, government-backed militias raped two women in the same month, residents said.

Most of the main town centres in Jebel Marra are deserted and an estimated 35,000 people have fled the most recent fighting, aid groups say.

[edit]

The village's rebels, who are full of war rhetoric, say they want to go as far as liberating Khartoum from the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and even toppling other Arab leaders whom they say sit idly by as Darfur's death toll rises.

But the rag-tag group can do little except fire AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades whenever the Sudanese military strikes. There are few places to hide in the bare, jagged mountains and hills of Deribat.

Moussa Abdel Shafi, a 28-year-old fighter, said there were about 1,200 rebels protecting the village. They include Abdul Gassam Abdul Karim, 87.

"I will fight until the last bullet, until I die," he said as youngsters cheered him.

Such rhetoric offers little relief to parents who have watched the violence shut down clinics and schools.

As people held up banners for Holmes demanding justice against "war crimes", and asking for food and water, Hassaniya Ahmed explained reality.

"I have 10 children. We have not seen any medicine for five months. When are they going to open the road?" she said.

Rebels hope to give people like her a sense of security. Holding assault rifles, some wore traditional turbans. Others looked fashionable in sun glasses, with braided hair. One smiling fighter said it all depended on "your style".

They hope the United Nations could bring about peace in Darfur but nobody expects a breakthrough anytime soon.

Darfur: Humanitarian Aid at Risk of Collapse

From the AP

The new U.N. humanitarian chief warned Sunday that humanitarian efforts in Darfur could collapse if the situation deteriorates and aid workers are prevented from doing their work.

The warning came on a day of unusually heavy condemnation of the violence in Darfur, with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain proposing a no-fly zone over the region and German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying the suffering of the Sudanese people had become "unbearable."

The U.N. chief, John Holmes, spoke while visiting a refugee camp on the outskirts of the town of El-Fasher in Darfur, on his first tour of the troubled region since becoming the international body's top humanitarian official.

Holmes had been barred by Sudanese soldiers from visiting another camp on Saturday, emphasizing, he said, the difficulties faced by aid workers here.

"This humanitarian effort is fragile," Holmes said, speaking from a camp that now houses some 45,000 people who have fled the violence. "If the situation deteriorates, it could collapse."

Holmes, who met with delegates of international aid groups during his two-day visit, said obstruction from Sudan's government and insecurity on the ground have created an environment where "morale is fragile" and could push aid workers to pull out.

"The risk is high," he said. "It is not imminent, but if things deteriorate, people may not want to maintain their efforts."

From IRIN

Aid workers in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur are frequently prevented from doing their jobs by being denied access to certain areas, United Nations Under-Secretary-General John Holmes said.

"The United Nations and its NGO [non-governmental organisation] partners are keeping these people alive - and we are not allowed in. We should be allowed to move freely," Holmes said on Saturday, after being denied permission to visit Kassab camp for internally displaced persons in North Darfur state.

"I fear this is typical of what aid workers trying to make a difference in Darfur deal with on a daily basis," he added.

Holmes, who is on a two-week mission to Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), was travelling to Kassab when his convoy was stopped in Kutum town, and told he could not visit the camp - home to 22,700 displaced people. The government-controlled town is about 120km north of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.

Half a dozen international NGOs and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) work in Kutum, some of whom have only recently returned after temporarily or partially suspending their programmes due to the deteriorating security situation in the area.

Before going to Darfur, Holmes urged the international community to help the people of southern Sudan, especially the hundreds of thousands of displaced returning to their homes after the end of the civil war two years ago.

During a visit to the southern capital of Juba, Holmes met Sudanese First Vice-President and President of the government of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, his Vice-President, Riek Machar, UN and other officials.

He called for a political solution to the Darfur crisis. "If there isn't a peaceful resolution in Darfur, it is much harder to maintain peace in the rest of Sudan, including in the South," he said.

Kiir said he had called for an all-Darfur conference in April to build consensus between warring parties in the region. "I have called for an all-Darfur conference to take place in Juba in April and I will be calling on you to contribute to this endeavour," Kiir told donors in Juba.

Darfur: UN Official Blocked From Camp

From the UN News Center

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator arrived today in the strife-torn Darfur region of Sudan but was blocked at a military checkpoint and denied permission to continue to a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

John Holmes had scheduled meetings in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur with the state governor, tribal leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and UN agencies working in the region, and planned to visit one of the many camps for some of Darfur's 2 million IDPs.

But six hours after arriving on the ground in Darfur, his convoy was stopped at a military checkpoint in Kutum town and denied permission to continue to Kassab IDP camp. Mr. Holmes had planned to tour this camp in order to meet with community leaders and speak with women about the consequences of the ongoing Darfur crisis, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which he heads.

The 22,700 inhabitants at Kassab camp depend on humanitarian aid for survival.

“The United Nations and its NGO partners are keeping these people alive, and we are not allowed in. We should be allowed to move freely,” said Mr. Holmes from the Kutum airfield this afternoon. “I fear this is typical of what aid workers trying to make a difference in Darfur deal with on a daily basis.”

There are half a dozen international NGOs and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) working in Kutum, some of whom have only recently returned after temporarily or partially suspending their programmes due to the deteriorating security situation. Clashes between rebel factions, Sudanese Government forces, and proxy militia have been going on in the area since late 2006, with the civilian population caught in the crossfire. Over the past four years in Darfur as a whole, the fighting has killed at least 200,000 people.

Government officials who later contacted the Under-Secretary-General apologized for the incident and offered him their assurances that his visit to Jebel Marra and to Abu Shouk IDP camp tomorrow would go smoothly, OCHA said.

“Tomorrow I look forward to conducting scheduled visits to these locales,” Mr. Holmes said, after accepting the apology.

Mr. Holmes will spend the night in El Fasher and plans to visit Jebel Marra and the Abu Shouk IDP camp on Sunday, 25 March, before returning to Khartoum.

Darfur: Ex-Rebels Lose More Men in Blow to Peace

From AFP

Former Darfur rebels said on Monday a senior commander was killed in an ambush in the troubled Sudanese region at the weekend on the same day as a gunbattle claimed 11 lives, in a new blow to a peace deal.

"Abdel Shafee Jomaa Arabi, in charge of the security arrangements stipulated by the peace agreement, was killed in an ambush" on Saturday, said the mainstream wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement which signed the accord with the government in May last year.

"He was killed along with two escorts and a further two people are still missing," the movement's secretary general in South Darfur state, Omar Mohammmed Ibrahim, told reporters.

Ibrahim said the attack took place near the state capital of Nyala but would not be drawn on whom he held responsible.

However SLM officials in Nyala said the attackers were members of the feared Janjaweed, a government-backed Arab militia accused of a spate of human rights abuses in Darfur since the ethnic minority rebels rose up in 2003.

The Darfur ambush came the same day as a gunbattle between SLM supporters and police in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman left 11 dead, including eight rebels and two police.

After that exchange, the former rebels already threatened to return to the bush to join continuing rebel factions in their campaign of violence against the Arab-led government.

"The attack by the police and security forces on the residence of our men was a violation of the ceasefire enshrined in the Abuja peace agreement which we have signed with the government," SLM spokesman Tayeb Khamis told AFP.

"We are prepared to resume the war and from Khartoum, if the government wants to fight," he added.

The clash was the first in the capital between the SLM and the government. It was also the worst violence in the metropolis since riots sparked by the death of southern former rebel leader John Garang in August 2005 killed more than 45 people.

According to Khamis, the incident broke out when SLM former rebels refused to hand over two of the group's members who were wanted by the police regarding a "traffic problem" earlier in the week.

SLM leader Minni Minnawi charged that state agents had deliberately provoked the incident in what he said was "an attempt by the government to sabotage the peace process".

"What happened reveals a will to move from peace to a state of war," Minnawi told a news conference in Khartoum, where the SLM opened an office following the 2006 peace deal.

Minnawi, who was appointed presidential adviser under the accord, warned his movement would "only pursue peace if the findings of the investigative commission, whose members should be impartial, are taken into account."

Interior Minister Zubeir Beshir Taha described the incidents as "regrettable" but insisted they would not affect the peace process.

Darfur: Britain, Germany Urge UN Sanctions

From the AP

Britain and Germany called Sunday for tougher action against Sudan to end four years of bloodshed in Darfur, where the new U.N. humanitarian chief warned of a possible collapse in the massive effort to aid refugees from the violence.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the actions of Sudan's government "unacceptable" and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Darfur region's suffering "unbearable."

Experts say the few economic sanctions imposed on Sudan by the United States and European Union have had little effect, and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon recently voiced his frustration at Sudan's government for refusing to let a 22,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force into Darfur.

[edit]

"The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable," Blair said at EU anniversary meetings in Berlin. "We need to get a new resolution in the United Nations which extends the sanctions regime ... We need to consider, in my view, a no-fly zone."

Protected by its top ally, China, which has veto power at the U.N. Security Council, Sudan has so far avoided any harsh U.N. sanctions for the atrocities committed in Darfur.

From the AP

The European Union acknowledged Monday that the lack of a military option and China's U.N. support for Sudan will make it tough to take decisive action on the Darfur crisis, despite calls by EU leaders for tougher measures.

"You have to make sure that that you do not raise expectations that cannot be met," said EU spokesman Amadeu Altafai Tardio.

Both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the possibility of tougher sanctions against the Sudanese government for what they called the "intolerable" situation in Darfur.

The 27-nation EU currently has an arms embargo on Sudan and visa bans on a number of Sudanese officials.

Blair called for a U.N. resolution expanding sanctions against Sudan and said a no-fly zone over Darfur should be considered. The United Nations currently has no sanctions against Sudan.

U.N. action on Sudan has made little progress in the face of Chinese objections, and the EU continues to see it as a major obstacle.

China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil and sells it weapons and military aircraft, has opposed sanctions against Sudan but urged the government earlier this month to follow through on a plan to deploy U.N. peacekeepers to beef up African Union forces in the troubled region.

"If we take this to the U.N. Security Council, it would be extremely risky to open this discussion and then not deliver," said Altafai Tardio. "China remains the test," he said.

Military experts have also expressed doubt about the feasibility of imposing a no-fly zone over such a vast and remote area in central Africa.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is to attend the Arab League Summit on Wednesday and hopes to raise the issue of Darfur on the sidelines,

EU officials said the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir also seemed to act out of fear the international community was bent on ousting him or dividing up the country.

"It is not on our agenda to change the regime in Khartoum. Secession is not on our agenda," he said.

Darfur: Police, Rebels Die in Clashes

From VOA

Eight former Darfur rebels and two Sudanese police officers were killed during clashes on Saturday outside of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Noel King in Khartoum reports that the former rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement say they were attacked by Sudanese police and call the fighting a grave threat to the Darfur Peace Agreement.

A spokesman for Darfur's former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement says police attacked a home for wounded SLM soldiers in Omderman, burning three cars and looting computers.

SLM spokesman Saif Haroun said eight former rebels were killed in the fighting.

The SLM, lead by Commander Minni Minnawi, was the only Darfur rebel faction to sign on to the Darfur Peace Agreement with the government of Sudan, last May.

Spokesman Haroun told VOA the fighting will undermine the already shaky peace agreement between the government of Sudan and former rebels.

"This kind of behavior will destroy everything," said Haroun. "We signed the peace agreement with the government. If the government keeps behaving like that I think its going to be very serious and very dangerous for the agreement itself."

The SLM said it did not know why the house was attacked.

The Reuters News Agency reports that Sudanese authorities said the former rebels would not turn over two of their members who were involved in a traffic accident.

Darfur: Lobby Sees Opportunity in Olympics

From The Washington Times

The Save Darfur lobby, a coalition of 180 organizations representing 130 million Americans, is flooding the airwaves with television advertisements and calling on its members to contact the White House and Congress, demanding that the Bush administration do more to end the "genocide" in Sudan.

"It is not that the Bush administration has not done anything, but what the president has done is not enough. No one can argue that what has been done is sufficient. It has not stopped the genocide," said Alex Meixner, U.S. policy coordinator of Save Darfur.

The coalition specifically wants a freeze on Sudan's oil revenue, much of which passes through New York banks; an arms embargo; visa and asset restrictions on government officials; and pressure on China to lean on its African ally. Save Darfur also wants U.N. peacekeepers, not U.S. soldiers, on the ground protecting Sudanese civilians.

"The United States needs to pressure Khartoum to stop obstructing the peace process and allow in peacekeepers," Mr. Meixner said. "Sudan will only do that when there are sufficient punitive measures. It does not have to be military [measures], but it does have to be strongly coercive: diplomacy augmented by punitive measures."

China has an $8 billion aid, oil and infrastructure investment in Sudan, from which it obtains about 6 percent of its oil. That arrangement provides Sudan with an estimated 60 percent of its income. But the relationship with Sudan is fast becoming an international embarrassment for Beijing as it prepares to host the Olympic Games next year.

"China is getting hammered on this, and it bothers them," said Stephen Morrison, head of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "China wants to be taken seriously, not as an abettor of war crimes. Sudan is troubling among China's elites. They certainly don't want Sudan to become the focus of the 2008 Olympics."

Mr. Meixner agreed.

"This is an opportunity for China to be out front and show they can be an international leader and save lives," he said.

Mr. Meixner said Save Darfur is considering how the Olympic Games might be used to pressure China on Sudan, the way the anti-apartheid movement forced change in South Africa.

"There are a number of groups looking at the Olympics and it is certainly something we are looking at," he said.

A semi-related article from The Boston Globe

Sitting at the computer in the office of his Northampton home last month, Eric Reeves pushed the "send" button, intending to spread an idea -- a modest, but potentially powerful idea.

Reeves, a professor of literature at Smith College who has become one of the world's foremost experts on the humanitarian disaster in Darfur, has concluded that only China, as Sudan's biggest economic and diplomatic supporter and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can stop the slaughter that President Bush has called genocide (as many as 400,000 people have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan since 2003, and more than 3 million others may face a similar fate). And China, says Reeves, can only be pressured to act by appealing to its sense of national pride and honor -- forcing Beijing to choose between its lucrative relationship with Khartoum and having its coveted games lumped in the collective consciousness with Nazi Germany's hosting of the Berlin games in 1936.

A United Nations plan to send in an armed force to protect humanitarian workers and stop the killing was sidetracked last year when the Khartoum regime refused to let them in, and China abstained from the vote. Most foreign aid workers have withdrawn from the area for lack of protection.

Sudan has weathered US and European sanctions for more than a decade, largely because China, along with several countries in the Muslim world, has shown no compunction in investing in Sudan. Buoyed by its oil exports, 70 percent of which go to China, Sudan's economy is humming along even as it is a pariah in the Western world.

Some human rights organizations, such as Reporters Without Borders, are calling for a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing next year, while other activists, including former Beatle Paul McCartney, call for boycotting Chinese products. Reeves is pushing what he considers a more realistic campaign to "brand" the 2008 Games the "Genocide Olympics," harnessing the energy of a frustrated, disheartened activist base.

"A boycott won't work, and it would be deeply divisive anyway," said Reeves. "It's time to begin shaming China. China's complicity in the Darfur genocide makes its Olympic slogan, 'One world, one dream,' ghastly in its irony. The US government is not going to do anything. The European Union is not going to lead either. It's time to take the effort private."

Reeves is not alone in believing that only China has the influence over the Khartoum regime to persuade it to accept a peacekeeping force and stop the killing. Karen Hirschfeld, the Sudan coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights, points out that while more than two-thirds of Sudan's crude exports go to China, that makes up only 10 percent of China's oil imports. In other words, Sudan needs China more than the other way around. "China does have this leverage," she said.

Robert Ross, a professor at Boston College who specializes in Chinese foreign policy, thinks a shaming campaign can have an impact. He doesn't accept the familiar argument that agitation makes China dig in its heels. "That's old thinking," he said. "The Chinese know there will be thousands of journalists in China for the Olympics, and they'll be writing stories about a lot of things other than the Olympics."

"The Chinese are working overtime to manage the Olympics," Ross said, "and managing Darfur is going to be part of it."

But there is less consensus among human rights activists that the prospect of being embarrassed by the linking of the Olympic Games to the genocide in Darfur has a realistic chance of forcing the Chinese to act.

Reeves acknowledges there is skepticism -- "contemptuous in some quarters," he allows. But he said the idea is gaining attention. Last week, the French presidential candidates raised the issue of Darfur and the Olympics at a Paris rally. Just as important, Reeves said, many Darfuris are enthusiastic backers of the shaming campaign, including Suleiman Jamous, the rebel coordinator for humanitarian aid who has been imprisoned for the last eight months.

"The Chinese have to see they have a stark choice," said Reeves. "Either they use their leverage to secure a peace support operation, or they will be the target of the biggest international shaming campaign in history."

Darfur: Sudan Executes Defector SLA Commander

From the Sudan Tribune

Sudanese authorities have killed, a commander of a former rebel faction signatory of Darfur peace agreement after his defection, a rebel faction announced today.

Sudanese security forces killed the head of the regiments of artillery within the Sudan Liberation Army led by Minni Minawi, commander Abdelshafi Jumah, the spokesperson of a holdout SLM faction, Esam al-Haj, said today.

Jumah and his two bodyguards were killed between Lebdo and Muhajeriah in South Darfur after his departure from Nyala to join the non-signatories rebels.

Jumah’s defection is not the first since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement between Sudanese government and a SLM faction led by Minni Minawi in may last year.

In October 2006, three leading commanders of SLM-MM — Mohamed Ali Klai, Mohamed Hamid Darbayen and Salah Mustafa Jok — had defected and joined the ranks of the holdout rebels:.

In another move, the military command of SLA-MM denounced yesterday the killing of SLA members in Khartoum. A press release in Arabic signed by commanders Hmad Shatta and Ahmed Mohamed Jari urged all the SLA troops in Khartoum to regain “the liberated area”. It further condemned “Minawi plots” against the SLA.

Rwanda: War Crimes Trial First Test of Canadian Legislation

From CanWest

When Desire Munyaneza claimed refugee status in Montreal in 1997, little did he know that a decade later he’d be making Canadian history, albeit not in a desirable way.

The father of two young children, who comes from a wealthy business family in Rwanda, is the first person to be charged under Canada’s seven-year-old Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, having allegedly murdered civilians, raped several women and pillaged during his country’s 1994 genocide.
His trial gets underway this morning in Quebec Superior Court at the Montreal courthouse where all parties right up to the judge are dealing with an untested law.

“It’s a humongous trial in unchartered waters,” said Richard Perras, one of three defence lawyers working on the case. “It has been a major enterprise to organize this.”

ndeed, the RCMP have been on Munyaneza’s tail since the War Crimes Unit in Ottawa was tipped off in 1999. Their investigation has taken them across Canada, to Europe and to Rwanda several times. In January, a commission of 17 people, including three prosecutors, three defence lawyers, a judge and support staff, spent six weeks in the Rwandan capital of Kigali interviewing 14 witnesses who are either in detention or ill, and therefore unable to make it to Montreal for the trial.

Another 13 witnesses are to be flown to Canada to testify. Because of the increasing number of violent reprisals against witnesses testifying at the Rwandan community courts, known as gacaca, their identity is top secret. Only the accused, the prosecutors, the defence and the judge will know their real names — they’ll be referred to by letters and numbers, and will testify behind a screen.

Among the witnesses on the Crown’s list is Senator Romeo Dallaire, who was in charge of the much-criticized United Nations forces in Rwanda during the genocide.

The cost to taxpayers will be enormous, but Gerry Caplan, an expert on the Rwandan genocide, said that seems like a small price to pay for justice.

By using the new law, he said, Canada is sending a message to the world that perpetrators can’t hide out here, and at the same time is assuaging Western guilt about not having done enough to prevent or stop the genocide, in which close to a million of the country’s Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were systematically slaughtered in the span of 100 days.

Munyaneza, who turned 40 on New Year’s Eve, was arrested October 19, 2005, as he left his Toronto home. He was transported to Montreal, where he was arraigned the next day on seven counts, including two of genocide, two of crimes against humanity and three of war crimes — all of which carry a life sentence.

His trial will be before a judge only.

Munyaneza’s initial refugee claim was dismissed on Sept. 20, 2000, and twice again on appeal. He was never given notice of his pending deportation, and so continued living freely in Canada. And if he’s convicted, he’ll serve his entire sentence here.

Darfur: Sudan to Question Top Official Over War Crimes

From AFP

Sudan is to re-interrogate a top official named by the International Criminial Court as a suspect in alleged war crimes in the troubled western region of Darfur, press reports said Friday.

Prosecutor General Salah Abu Zeid said that new evidence had called for the re-interrogation of Ahmed Haroun, secretary of state for humanitarian affairs, who had been cleared of war crimes in Darfur earlier this month.

Abu Zeid also announced that three security officials accused of murdering Darfur civilians and burning down their villages, including fellow ICC-suspect and militia leader Ali Kosheib, are to stand trial.

In February, ICC prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo named Kosheib and Haroun (secretary of state of the interior at the time of the alleged crimes) as Darfur war crimes suspects.

Moreno-Ocampo began investigating accusations of persecution, torture, rape and murder in June 2006. He has focused on events between 2003 and 2004, considered the most violent period in the Darfur conflict.

Khartoum reacted to the ICC's move by insisting that its judiciary was fully competent to handle the cases, rejecting the legitimacy of any foreign court seeking to try Sudanese nationals.

It simultaneously announced that Kosheib had been detained since late November and that Haroun had been interrogated and cleared of any wrongdoing.

Darfur: Africa is Tough Challenge

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The top U.S. diplomat to Africa said Thursday she finally has hope for peace in Somalia, but only frustration with the ongoing war and genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

"We want to end all the wars in Africa," said Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who met with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editors and reporters. "Darfur is the most difficult diplomatic challenge we have in Africa."

The United States has four priorities on the continent, Frazer said: conflict resolution, democratization, economic growth, and prevention and treatment of diseases including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Annual U.S. aid to Africa is $4.1 billion, up from less than $800 million in 2001, she said.

Six wars on the African continent have ended since 2001, Frazer said, but three continue in Somalia, Sudan and Ivory Coast. Other conflicts, such as those in Guinea and Zimbabwe, she considers "political crisis that turns violent" rather than wars.

"We've done well on the peace front, but Darfur is the hardest nut to crack," Frazer said.

Rebels in Sudan's western province have been fighting the Sudanese military and its Arab Janjaweed militia since 2003. At least 200,000 people have been killed, women have been systematically raped, and 2 million civilians have been forced to flee their homes.

The Sudanese government has backed away from an agreement to allow up to 20,000 African and international troops into the region to help quell the violence.

The international community must enforce the agreement -- perhaps with a coalition of international forces -- and stop trying to reach more compromises, Frazer said.

Until then, she said, "What about the woman that's sitting in Darfur living in inhuman conditions? What do you tell her?"

The biggest impact Africa has on the United States is the terror threat, Frazer said.

Uganda: Stalled Peace Talks to Resume

From IRIN

Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) will resume in mid-April in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba, a senior government official said on Friday.

"We have been consulting through former [Mozambican] President Joaquim Chissano and we have agreed to have a meeting within the first two weeks of April," Ugandan internal affairs minister Ruhakana Rugunda told a news conference in the capital, Kampala.

"A tentative date of 13 April has been agreed upon," he added. Chissano is the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the areas affected by the LRA insurgency.

The on-off talks, which are intended to end the 21-year-old war in northern Uganda, started in July under the mediation of southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar. But a stalemate arose after the rebels demanded a new venue and another mediator, saying they feared for their lives in Juba and that the mediator was biased.

"We shall have preliminary discussions before the real negotiations start and one of the issues we shall handle first is the formal extension of the cessation of hostility agreement," Rugunda added.

The agreement, which was signed in August and renewed in December, expired in February. It had raised hopes of a possible end to a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced two million more.

Rugunda said Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir would continue hosting the talks in Sudan but had demanded a time limit for the talks.

"He [El-Bashir] said the talks should not be open-ended; there must be a timeframe because this will be one way to make progress and get the talks to move faster," he said.

Congo: Arrest Warrant Issued for Bemba

From the AP

Congo's chief prosecutor issued an arrest warrant Friday for a former warlord and senator who took refuge inside a foreign embassy while his personal army and government troops fought in the capital.

Prosecutor Tsaimanga Mukenda said that neither Jean-Pierre Bemba's immunity as a senator nor the fact that he had sought refuge in the South African Embassy would stop him from seeking his arrest on charges of high treason.

"He has caused serious infractions by organizing a militia and by ordering looting ... his actions amount to high treason and we will pursue him wherever he is," Mukenda said, adding he would ask parliament to strip Bemba of immunity.

Bemba, whose personal army began clashing with security forces Thursday, arrived at the South African Embassy Thursday night with his wife, said the embassy's charge d'affaires, Kenneth Pedro. "This is a temporary measure, until a cease-fire is declared. He has not sought asylum," Pedro said.

Gunfire rang out and thick black smoke rose from an oil refinery in the capital. Radio Okapi, a United Nations-backed radio station, reported that the state-run refinery had been hit during the clashes, possibly by a mortar shell. Numerous restaurants were looted overnight, as well as the Embassy of Zimbabwe, said government spokesman Toussaint Tshilombo.

The army has seized control of two of Bemba's three residences in the capital, the governor of Kinshasa, Andre Kimbuta, said. He said the military was slowly gaining control over the city and that some of Bemba's fighters had fled.

Mortar shells landed as far as two miles away in Brazzaville, the capital of Republic of Congo, which sits across the Congo River from Kinshasa. Shells damaged the defense minister's home there, a government spokesman said.

South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said Friday that his country would send an envoy to the Congo to try to help negotiate a cease-fire.

Chad/Darfur: Chad Says Sudan Bombs Eastern Towns, Breaking Pact

From Reuters

Chad said on Thursday warplanes from neighbouring Sudan had bombed two towns in its violence-plagued east, killing several people and violating a non-aggression pact signed last month.

Chadian President Idriss Deby's government said two bombers had been pounding the settlements of Kariari and Gregui near the lawless eastern border with Sudan's Darfur region since Wednesday, causing heavy material damage.

The central African states agreed in February in Libya to end border violence fuelled by the conflict in Darfur, where an estimated 2.5 million people have been uprooted and some 200,000 killed in a political and ethnic conflict raging since 2003.

Chad's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Djidda Moussa Outman, summoned Sudan's ambassador to deliver a strong protest and call on Khartoum to stop the attacks.

"The Chadian government reserves the right to use all available means to assure the defence of its territory," read a communique signed by government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor.

Chad and Sudan have long accused each other of supporting rebels groups fighting against their respective governments.

It was the second time in five months that Chad has said Sudan had bombed its territory. In October, N'Djamena said four Sudanese planes bombed four border towns. Khartoum dismissed the statement as propaganda.

At a summit last month convened by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Chad and Sudan agreed not to interfere in each other's internal affairs and "refrain from any hostile activity against one another".

It was their third such agreement in 12 months.

Darfur/Chad: Thousands Fleeing, Insecurity Hampering Access

From IRIN

Thousands of people fleeing conflict in Chad have sought refuge in Sudan's western region of Darfur despite the humanitarian crisis there, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday.

An estimated 20,000 Chadians have sought refuge in West Darfur since 2005, while 16,000 had opted to remain close to the border to access their land. “These people are fleeing the conflict in their country to camps in West Darfur where there is food and security," said Annette Rehrl, UNHCR spokeswoman in Sudan.

[edit]

"Every day we get 50 new arrivals from Chad and over the weekend we moved a group of over 200 Chadian refugees from the volatile Chad-Sudan border area to a UNHCR refugee camp in West Darfur," UNHCR said in a statement. The refugees were moved in a convoy of 14 lorries from the border village of Arara for Um Shalaya camp near Mornei, 75km from the frontier. A second convoy is expected to depart on Thursday en route to Um Shalaya.

The new arrivals at Um Shalaya are part of a bigger group of 550 Chadians in Darfur who have requested to be moved away from the border because of insecurity. "The refugees have so far made no impact on the humanitarian situation in Darfur and are receiving basics like food and medical services," Rehrl said.

[edit]

Meanwhile, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, arrived in Sudan for talks with senior government officials, UN officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations, civil society and donor governments.

"Until there is peace in Darfur, we need all parties to do their best to ensure the humanitarian effort goes forward unimpeded," Holmes said after meeting various officials in Khartoum.

"I am sure we can resolve these problems in the spirit of constructive partnership," he added. "We have had some useful discussions about the humanitarian situation in Darfur and I’m looking forward to going to the field and assessing the situation myself."

He will also travel to Juba, South Sudan's capital, Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic during the two-week visit.

In a related development, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said insecurity in Darfur had seriously limited the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid.

In December 2006, about 20 armed men attacked several agency compounds, harassing staff and stealing vehicles, communication equipment and money in Gereida, South Darfur, forcing aid agencies to withdraw staff from the area. Gereida has the largest number of displaced people in the region.

"Over 120,000 people are stranded in the camp, in urgent need of food, water, healthcare, sanitation and waste disposal," said Jacques de Maio, head of ICRC operations in the Horn of Africa, urging donors to provide an additional 32 million Swiss francs (US$26.3 million) for ICRC's Darfur budget.

Darfur: Sudan Temporarily Suspends 52 Local NGOs

From Reuters

Sudan has temporarily suspended 52 local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in South Darfur state after an investigation found they did not comply with regulations, an official said on Thursday.

But Jamal Youssef Idriss, from the government's Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) in Nyala, said they had not been expelled from Darfur adding that he planned to convene meetings with all the NGOs to discuss resumption of operations.

"Some of these NGOs are only present in name -- they don't have offices, no vehicles they have nothing just their bags and papers and a stamp," he told Reuters.

He said of the 100 Sudanese NGOs registered in South Darfur state, an investigation committee found that 48 complied with regulations but 52 did not. But, he said, only a few of those were likely to be "ghost agencies".

"Many may be allowed to return (to work). There is no final decision to expel anyone yet," he added. "We stopped them only for a few days."

The investigation aimed to prevent fraud by Sudanese NGOs taking U.N. and international aid agency contracts and money and not implementing anything, he said.

[edit]

Idriss stressed international aid agencies had freedom of movement and were allowed to work without issue.

International NGOs dispute that. Despite agreements guaranteeing freedom of movement, speedy visas and fast-track customs for equipment, they say they are buried under bureaucracy and made to wait weeks for travel permits or assets.

Darfur: The Less-Known Victims

From the Los Angeles Times

He was shopping for cooking oil when Arab gunmen attacked his village. Adam Abdalla Omar, 70, tried to rescue his cow, but the invaders shot off his left arm. Now he lives in a displacement camp, so desperate and bored he worries he's losing his mind.

It's a sadly familiar story in Darfur, except that Omar too is an Arab.

Arabs in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are usually depicted as the aggressors in a conflict with black African ethnic groups, but many Arabs now find themselves caught up in the violence, forced into camps by intertribal fighting and cut off from traditional migration routes they've relied upon for centuries to survive.

In the latest twist, Arab militias armed by the Sudanese government as part of its counterinsurgency strategy are turning their guns against each other.

In the last three months, such inter-Arab clashes have killed nearly 200 people in southern Darfur, officials estimate. Thousands of Arabs have been forced into makeshift displacement camps around towns such as Kas, Nyala and Zalingei.

The deadliest fighting has been between a powerful group of Arab pastoralists, known as Reizegat, and a smaller Arab tribe of seminomadic farmers, called Targem. Officials say the two tribes once were allies and have participated in the systematic attacks against non-Arab farming villages that have left more than 200,000 people dead in Darfur since 2003, mostly of disease or hunger in the early years, and an additional 2 million displaced.

About 32 Targem villages were torched last month by Reizegat attackers, African Union officials said. Four Targem children were executed in their sleep, the officials reported.

"This is absolutely new," said Mariam Sadiq Mahdi, daughter of former Sudanese Prime Minister Sadiq Mahdi, who is the leader of the opposition Umma Party.

Experts say Arab tribes used by the government as mercenaries are starting to panic about how they'll figure in Darfur's political future, particularly in light of a fragile peace agreement signed in May between some non-Arab rebel groups in Darfur and the Sudanese government.

"Arabs were not part of the negotiation," said Mohmed Izzat, who represents Arab nomad populations in the state government of North Darfur. "They got nothing." Such views have led to fighting over the land and resources that the government promised Arab militiamen, experts say.

"The cooperation with the government worked for a while, but the government went through the whole peace process without representing the people they once used," Mariam Sadiq Mahdi said. "That's left Arabs with a lot of tension. It's very turbulent."

Although conflicts among Arab tribes in this region date back hundreds of years, the recent clashes are unusual because of the high number of casualties.

"Yesterday they were using sticks," said Hassan Turabi, a prominent Islamist opposition leader in Sudan. "But the government gave them arms. Now they are using guns. Many more are dying."

There are also reports that the Sudanese government is fueling the inter-Arab conflicts, perhaps in an effort to keep the tribes vulnerable and therefore loyal to the government. In the recent clashes between the Reizegat and Targem, aid officials say, the government secretly intervened in behalf of both sides, providing guns, trucks and even soldiers.

With heavy international pressure on Sudan to allow the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers and with prosecutors from the International Criminal Court in The Hague threatening to deliver indictments soon, some Arab militia leaders fear the government in Khartoum will withdraw its support.

"They want what they were promised, but they're worried the government is going to hang them out to dry," said one Darfur political consultant who did not want to be identified.

The recent clashes are raising the broader question of what will happen to the more than 2 million Arab nomads, people who have lived in Darfur for centuries. Arab leaders here say only a fraction of the Arab population, from 10% to 20%, has participated in the government-led attacks. Most Arabs have remained neutral and some have even sided with Darfur's rebels, the leaders say.

Late last year, an Arab-led rebel group was formed that distanced itself from the tribes participating in the Arab militias backed by Khartoum.

Izzat said Darfur's Arabs suffered from a lack of education. He said fewer than 10% were literate or educated. "We cannot explain ourselves, so we are exploited," he said.

"Now everyone acts as if we are all killers. It's as if we are against all the world. People want to make us criminals instead of helping us."

He said characterizations of the Darfur crisis as stemming from a conflict that pits Arab herders against non-Arab farmers are overly simplistic. "We have African blood in our bodies," Izzat said.

Advocates for the Arab nomads note that Darfur's turmoil has disrupted traditional north-south migration routes used for grazing and watering cattle and camels. Several hundred thousand nomads are trapped in pockets such as Kebkabiya, a town about 60 miles northeast of here, unable to make use of camel trading routes to Libya and Egypt. Camel prices have plummeted 40%, and many nomads have seen their livelihoods cut off, experts say.

"Because of the fighting, they are trapped and surrounded in Kebkabiya," said Mohammed Sayid Hassan, who runs a nomad advocacy group in North Darfur's capital, El Fasher.

Nomad advocates say humanitarian aid rarely reaches Arabs who find themselves caught in the conflict.

"The [aid groups] give us nothing," Izzat said. "They view us as enemies."

Aid workers acknowledge that the needs of nomads have not received as much attention, but they say efforts are underway to provide assistance and encourage reconciliation.

Darfur: China Defends Stance After French Politician Calls for Olympic Boycott

From the AP

China on Thursday defended its position on the Darfur crisis after a French presidential candidate called for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless more is done to pressure the Sudanese government.

Francois Bayrou, a center-right candidate for France's presidency, proposed this week that his country's athletes stay away from the Beijing Games in an effort to make China lean on Sudan's government to help end the bloodshed in the region.

China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil and sells it weapons and military aircraft, has opposed sanctions against Sudan but urged the government earlier this month to follow through on a plan to deploy U.N. peacekeepers to beef up African Union forces in the troubled region.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said he was not aware of Bayrou's remarks but said, "the people who put forward those remarks are not very clear on China's position on the Darfur issue."

"We can see that the Darfur issue is very complicated and sensitive," Liu said at a regular briefing. "It's hard to expect to resolve the issue within one or two days. ... We hope that Sudan can hold equal consultations with all parties concerned and push forward a final, political solution of this issue."

A permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China has come under increasing international pressure to use its influence over Khartoum to resolve the conflict, which erupted in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of neglect.

Defections in Darfur?

From TIME

Cracks are beginning to appear in the ranks of Darfur's feared Janjaweed militia — at least that's according to leaders of the rebel forces fighting against the government-backed Arab supremacists that have rained terror on the region's ethnic African villages. Leaders of Darfur's rebel groups based in eastern Chad tell TIME that they believe several Janjaweed leaders are now close to joining the rebels. Their defection would be spurred by fear that the Sudan government may betray Janjaweed commanders to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they would face war crimes charges. And the rebels seem remarkably ready to welcome into their ranks the men who have been the frontline troops of a vicious campaign of murder, rape, pillage and ethnic cleansing.

"The Janjaweed are part of Darfur," declares Tajeldeen Bashir Niam, general secretary of the Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.) — one of Darfur's two main resistance movements. "They have approached us to join us and that's what we're working for: to be united, Arab and African, for the people of Darfur. The Janjaweed are realizing the only solution to Darfur 's problems is to resist the government."

Not only would it be an act of supreme cynicism for the rebels to swell their ranks with the very men accused by the U.S. of waging genocide against Darfurians; it may also be wishful thinking to imagine a united front of fractious rebel groups and Janjaweed defectors. Still, some rebel commanders believe the situation has changed dramatically as a result of actions by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although international pressure on Khartoum has been slow in coming, with U.N. Security Council action stonewalled by China, and Sudan refusing entry to U.N. peacekeeping forces, the ICC has targeted specific leaders for prosecution. Last month, its chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked pre-trial judges to issue summonses for Ahmed Haroun, a former state interior minister, and militia commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb. Rebel leaders say the ICC investigation will potentially drive a wedge between Janjaweed commanders and their backers in Khartoum. At Tine, on the Darfur-Chad border, local commanders from the J.E.M. and Darfur's other rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army (S.L.A.), claim that one prominent Janjaweed commander had already changed sides, bringing with him 400 men and 10 trucks mounted with machine guns. The claim could not be verified.

"After the ICC ruling, everything changed," says Zeber Muktar Salim, a spokesman for one of the several S.L.A. factions. The J.E.M.'s head of logistics, Nasiruddin Ahmed Taendy, added: "Khartoum hired the Janjaweed to kill their brother Darfurians. Now the Janjaweed have found out they were deceived — and they suspect the government will sell them out to the I.C.C. We are expecting the numbers of defectors to increase by the day."

Rebel leaders hope that defections would weaken Khartoum's military capabilities on the ground, and even help build a united Darfur rebel army to bring down the government. But it's questionable whether such an alliance of convenience is possible, let alone capable of enduring. And if its objective is to continue a war that has already left 200,000 dead and displaced 2.5 million people, it's far from clear that it would be good news for the long-suffering Darfurians.

Darfur: U.S. Pushing Sanctions

From the AP

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United States is pressing other countries to apply sanctions against Sudan to pressure Khartoum to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Darfur region.

Rice expressed frustration at the international response to calls for sanctions.

“I am somewhat disappointed that some in the U.N. have already said that they are unwilling to think about sanctions,” she aid.

Rice said that the United States is considering unilateral steps in the face of the refusal by Sudan to accept a more robust peacekeeping force.

“Despite multiple efforts— and I want to underscore multiple efforts— to help find a solution that the government of Khartoum could accept in terms of getting a peacekeeping force in have been rebuffed,” she said.

Darfur: UN Officials on Separate Humanitarian, Political Missions

From the UN News Center

Two senior United Nations officials are beginning separate missions to address the humanitarian and political aspects of the crisis in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, where efforts to deploy a hybrid UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force have stalled over differences with the Sudanese Government.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes has landed in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, for talks with senior Government officials, UN staffers and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society and donor governments.

The stop in Khartoum is the first leg of a two-week mission that will take in Juba in southern Sudan, the Darfur region itself and then the neighbouring countries of Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, is scheduled to arrive in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on a separate mission to discuss how to best coordinate Eritrean mediation efforts in Darfur with those of the UN and the AU.

The missions are taking place amid rising concern over the failure to agree on the details of the deployment of the hybrid UN-AU force, with Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Affairs Jean-Marie Guéhenno telling journalists earlier this week that there is still “a long way to go” before the UN and Sudan can resolve their differences.

Darfur: Kiir Calls on Rebel to Meet in Juba

From Reuters

South Sudan's president has called for rebels from the western Darfur region to meet in his capital to build consensus ahead of possible peace talks to end a four-year-old insurgency and humanitarian crisis.

In a speech to donor nations on Wednesday in Juba, Salva Kiir also said peace in Sudan had to include the entire country and the Darfur rebels should form a joint committee to prepare for the meeting which should take place in April.

"I have personally called for an all-Darfur conference to take place in Juba in April and I will be calling on you to contribute in this endeavour," Kiir, who is also Sudanese first vice president, told a donors conference in the capital of southern Sudan Juba.

[edit]

Kiir said he had asked the rebels to form a joint team to be the focal point of coordination for the meeting. The SPLM has good relations with the Darfur rebels as they advised and helped them during the early stages of the rebellion.

"The conference is to build consensus and a common political stand on critical issues that would be the basis for a comprehensive peace agreement in Darfur," said Kiir.

Darfur: With Eyes on White House, Giuliani Weighs In

From The New York Sun

Mayor Giuliani built his reputation in New York on his brash, take-no-prisoners approach and his response to the World Trade Center attacks. As a presidential candidate, he's wading into foreign policy matters more complicated than his bread and butter, dealing with terrorism.

Like several of his presidential rivals, Mr. Giuliani is adding his voice to the chorus of politicians and activists talking about the conflict in Darfur, where some estimate that 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in what some term an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Sudanese government.

While it may seem counterintuitive for Mr. Giuliani, a leading Republican candidate, to take on an issue that's been championed by many left-leaning activists and politicians, the conflict is of chief concern to conservative Christians and some pro-Israel Jewish groups.

Connie Mackey, the senior vice president at the political action arm of Focus on the Family, a Christian evangelical group, said Mr. Giuliani "needs to find a way to warm up to Christian conservatives, and this is an issue that they have taken to their hearts for years."

Mr. Giuliani raised the issue at a fund-raiser last week, deep into his 38-minute address. He praised the Bush administration for focusing on Darfur, but called it to hold a summit for countries that can "help stem the tide of genocide." A resolution of the conflict, he said, would demonstrate that "we can do positive things and good things."

"We need to seize the opportunity to proclaim the heart and soul of what America is all about because we are allowing ourselves to be defined by our enemies," Mr. Giuliani told about 1,000 supporters who were snacking on hot dogs.

The argument that getting more involved in Darfur would not only save Sudanese lives but also improve America's worldwide reputation includes a national security angle. While he did not criticize Mr. Bush, suggesting that America's image is tainted clearly distances him from the president.

Political analysts say Mr. Giuliani, who is surging in the polls, is creating that distance.

"It's a high-wire act for Republicans," a political science professor at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said. "They have to be loyal to Bush on key policy issues to get the nomination, but they have to put some distance between themselves and Bush in order to win the general election."

Ms. Mackey said she does not begrudge any candidate who brings attention to Darfur, but said Mr. Giuliani is searching for ways to bolster his foreign policy resume and make inroads with a conservative base that disagrees with him on gay rights, abortion, and other social issues.

Darfur: Blair Calls for New UN Resolution

From the Press Association

Tony Blair today urged tough new United Nations sanctions against Sudan's ruling elite in a bid to halt the killing in Darfur.

The prime minister's call came in a letter to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who holds the rotating EU presidency.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said the letter would not be made public.

But he added: "The burden of it is that enough is enough. The president of Sudan is clearly not complying with the agreement he reached earlier this year.

"Therefore, the prime minister believes it's time for a new tough UN resolution which would mean targeted sanctions aimed at the top 100 members of the Sudanese government and also those who are supporting them.

"What he hopes is that the UN as a whole will support tougher action."

Mr Blair will discuss his proposal with fellow EU leaders at a summit in Berlin this weekend.

Darfur: Ann Curry’s Ambition: To Witness the Suffering

From the New York Times

Ms. Curry is on a very short list of American broadcast journalists who have reported even once from Sudan, where the conflict is estimated to have claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced countless others. Before Ms. Curry had set foot there last March, she had lobbied hard to be sent to Southeast Asia (for the aftermath of the tsunami in 2004) and Kosovo in 1999.

In a telephone interview from Khartoum on Tuesday, as she and a three-member camera crew prepared for a two-hour flight on a small plane into Darfur, Ms. Curry was asked why she had felt compelled to return to Sudan twice since her first visit. “The real reason, to be perfectly honest,” she said, “is that as a child when I first learned that there were people who risked their own lives and even the lives of their children, their families, to save Jews during the Holocaust, it was a profound moment for me. It made me question whether I am the kind of human being who would take such risks.”

In providing the world glimpses of the suffering in Darfur, she has aligned herself with journalists, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have put themselves in harm’s way, often for far longer periods.

“I ask a lot of my children, I ask their forgiveness for that,” said Ms. Curry, who has a 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. “If reporters who have children were unwilling to cover the most important stories of our time, where would we be?”

Emphasizing that she and NBC had taken every reasonable step to keep her safe — including stationing her at a relief camp behind barbed wire — she added, “I am more afraid of not having done enough to help others than I am of dying.”

In granting Ms. Curry her wish to travel to hazardous regions armed with the equivalent of a high-beam spotlight, NBC also appears to have given her wide license to inject more emotion into her reporting than she or others might otherwise be allowed on more conventional stories. In an interview with the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, showcased on “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” on Monday — apparently the first he had granted to a broadcast journalist in three years — Ms. Curry was shown aggressively confronting a leader Mr. Williams identified as “the man accused of unleashing genocide in Africa’s Darfur region.”

“Mr. President, I have this map from the U.S. Department of State that shows more than 1,000 villages in the Darfur region — more than 1,000 — burned,” Ms. Curry began. “And the question is: How could this just be done by Arab militias without the support of the Sudanese government?”

As Mr. Al-Bashir began his response, Ms. Curry immediately cut him off, saying, “This is shocking.” Through a translator he eventually responded by disputing the authenticity of Ms. Curry’s map.

Ms. Curry’s dogged commitment to provide firsthand accounts of the burnings, maimings and rapes that have characterized the conflict in the Sudan — including in reports she was preparing for “Nightly News” last night and “Today” this morning — has come in the midst of a period that, she acknowledged, included some professional disappointment. Ms. Curry said in the interview on Tuesday that she had considered herself well qualified to succeed Katie Couric as co-host of “Today” when Ms. Couric departed last spring for the “CBS Evening News”; instead NBC wooed Meredith Vieira from ABC.

“I did do the job this summer,” Ms. Curry said, referring to the period before Ms. Vieira’s first broadcast in September, when Ms. Curry sat alongside Matt Lauer most days. “People said I did it well. Viewers seemed to respond to my doing it well.”

She and Ms. Vieira had since grown close, she said, and “I know it has all worked out.” Ms. Curry said it would have been difficult for her to travel to Africa as often as she had, “had I been given that job.”

Nicholas D. Kristof, the journalist often regarded as having focused the sharpest and most consistent attention on Darfur through his column on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, wrote in an e-mail exchange yesterday that Ms. Curry “gave it credibility as a news story.”

“Other TV reporters have made trips to Darfur,” he wrote, while himself on assignment in Afghanistan, “but none have covered it as aggressively, relentlessly and passionately as Ann.”

He added, “We in the news media have always done a poor job covering genocide,” at least partly, he said, “because it happens in remote, dangerous areas.”

“Ann is fighting that tradition,” he wrote, “and NBC will go down as the network that really covered this genocide seriously as it happened.”

Ms. Curry had accompanied Mr. Kristof on her first two visits to the region. “I was a little nervous about traveling with a hotshot anchor to a place that can be dangerous and difficult,” Mr. Kristof wrote. “We stayed that time in a little $4-a-night hotel, several people to a ramshackle room, with a pit toilet that was home to a bat that zoomed in and out at the worst moments.”

“Ann,” he added, “put up with the bats, the scorpions, and of course all kinds of militias with guns.”

Ms. Curry’s immediate boss, Jim Bell, executive producer of “Today,” said he had repeatedly chosen to showcase Ms. Curry’s reports in the program’s first half hour — which often contains the hardest news — at least partly because he expected someday to “look back and say, ‘I hope we covered that enough.’ ”

CAR: Northern Town Empty as Scared Civilians Stay Away

From IRIN

Clashes between rebels and government troops in northeastern Central African Republic (CAR), have left the once bustling town of Birao virtually deserted, with thousands of civilians too scared to return.

More than 600 houses were set on fire in the latest clashes three weeks ago, according to a local official. "All were burned down by rebels when they were pulling out," Col Mathieu Mobiliawa, the prefect, told IRIN in the town.

The rebels, belonging to the Union des forces démocratiques pour le rassemblement (UFDR), are pushing for talks with the government over power-sharing in the CAR. In November, they captured five towns - Birao, Sam-Ouandja, Ouanda-Djalle, Ouadda and Ndele. Birao is the main town in the region

After about a month, the regular army, backed by French troops, regained control. But clashes between the UFDR and government continued in the region.

On Tuesday, one of their leaders, Damane Zakaria, rejected claims that they burnt down houses. "We have no reason to burn down houses in our own town; the regular troops and the French army are responsible for the destruction of Birao," Damane, speaking from nearby Tiringulu, said. He called on the international community to investigate the attacks.

United Nations officials, who visited the town, said 95 percent of Birao's population fled the fighting. "Never before has the UN seen a town in CAR where 70 percent of houses have been torched," a shocked Toby Lanzer, UN humanitarian coordinator in the CAR, said on Tuesday. "The impact of this on people's lives cannot be exaggerated."

Before the latest fighting in March, Birao had 14,000 people. Now, the UN estimates, only about 600 people remain in the town, which is near the border with the western Sudanese Darfur region. Those who fled the violence are believed to be living in the bush.

"In addition to burning houses, which makes the population's return virtually impossible before the start of the rainy season in May, the team also noted that the town's schools and hospital had been destroyed or looted during the fighting," the UN said in a statement.

Local authorities in Birao described the situation as "dramatic". A female medical worker still living in the devastated town accused all the forces on the ground of responsibility for the violence.

"Both the rebels and the national army were firing rockets in all directions and most of the rockets set houses on fire," said Delphine Zanaba. "French jet fighters also contributed to the destruction as they hit some houses."

Even as the residents fled, they left behind a deplorable humanitarian situation. The town's main hospital is closed down and virtually all medical workers have fled. As the fighting continued, medical stores were looted by the rebels.

R2P: Dallaire Advocates Responsibility to Protect

From The Berkelyan

Using PowerPoint slides he self-deprecatingly called "a saving grace for us who don't have that intellectual depth that others do," Dallaire referred to the overthrow of colonialism in dozens of nations in the mid-20th century, and the former colonial powers' decision to buy off "a bunch of dictators … to keep a grip on these places." But, with the end of the Cold War, he said, "we simply turned to them and said 'Hey we don't need you anymore…. You should sort yourselves out. And do it fast… If you want money from the IMF or the World Bank, we want to see a democratic system. You've got two years.'"

Because of "our impatience to see results, our impatience at seeing wastage of money," said Dallaire, "we are in fact creating more tensions," and we're expecting new nations "to move much faster than we ever did" to create democratic institutions. In the process, "we're helping to create catastrophes."

Dallaire denounced the racist "pecking order of humanity" that puts sub-Saharan black Africans at the bottom, least likely to be protected from human-rights abuses, especially when the Western powers see no clear self-interest in doing so. And he threw out a challenge to the "Middle Powers" — non-superpower nations like Canada (and Germany, Japan, Italy, India, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Holland, the Scandinavian nations, Mexico, South Africa, and Nigeria) to step up to the plate. "Have they proportionally provided the assets to the U.N.?" Dallaire asked. "The ones who failed me were the sovereign states that refused to give the assets to solve the problem. Every sovereign state that did not provide assets … is guilty of having abandoned the Rwandans," he accused.

In an "era of imploding nations [that] is not going away," said Dallaire, the international community needs "a whole new set of tools, a new conceptual base to conflict resolution." To that end, he endorsed the burgeoning international effort to refine, win international support for, and "operationalize" the "responsibility to protect" (R2P). This new international-security and human-rights doctrine holds that the world community has a "responsibility… to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity" — including by taking timely and decisive military action, as a last resort, when nation states will not or cannot protect their own populations from such threats. Adopted by all 192 nations at the U.N. World Summit in late 2005, R2P clearly brands military intervention as an option of last resort, and lays out the specific circumstances in which this radical step would be deemed necessary. (The U.S.-led intervention in Iraq would not have met the criteria.) To implement R2P fully, proponents need to build political will in each country and reform processes at the U.N. so that action could be taken in a timely manner.

The new doctrine, says HRC Executive Director Camille Crittenden, was developed in large part in response to the tragic failures of Rwanda. One of its original authors and the conference keynote speaker was the former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who has said of the current moment: "Now, for all that we repeatedly chant the post-Holocaust, post-Cambodia, post-Rwanda mantra of 'never again,' we are asking ourselves yet again, in the face of more mass killing and dying in Darfur, whether we really are capable … of stopping nation-states murdering or killing by neglect their own people."

The "Stopping Mass Atrocities" conference, hosted by HRC, was only the second devoted to the responsibility to protect, says Crittenden. "There isn't any sort of R2P central headquarters that's coordinating efforts." Consequently, participants plan to draft a summary document and hope to contribute "to creation of a central infrastructure for making R2P a reality," she says.

What can individuals do to move the process forward? "Join NGOs; give them your brain power. Get your boots dirty," advised Dallaire. "Go touch, smell, taste the reality" of developing and underdeveloped nations. And then "come back and influence the situation. Move into a sense of responsibility to humanity."

Genocide: Rice Dodges Armenia Question

From the AP

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United States should not be involved in a dispute between Turkey and Armenia over whether the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians almost a century ago constituted genocide.

Under intense questioning from Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, sponsor of a resolution that would declare that Turkey's Ottoman predecessor state committed genocide, Rice repeatedly avoided answering whether she believed there was any basis for historical debate on the matter.

"What we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past, and in examining their past to get over it," she said in a congressional hearing. "I don't think it helps that process of reconciliation for the United States to enter this debate at that level."

The dispute involves the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenian advocates, backed by many historians, contend they died in an organized genocide; the Turks say they were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before Turkey was born in 1923.

"Madame Secretary, your comments that there should be some kind of debate or discussion about the genocide suggests that you have a question about whether genocide occurred," Schiff said in the hearing on the State Department's spending for foreign operations.

The Bush administration, which has heard threats from top Turkish officials that passage of Schiff's resolution would damage relations, has been trying to quash it.

"I believe that this is something that the Turks and Armenians are best to address," Rice told Schiff.

Rice recently wrote to top members of congress, including House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, both Democrats in a position to decide the resolution's fate.

In her letter, Rice said the measure could inflict significant damage on U.S. efforts to reconcile the long-standing dispute between the West Asian neighbors.

She also noted that Turkey ended military ties with France after its National Assembly voted in October to make denial of Armenian genocide a crime. A similar move by Turkey with U.S. ties could have drastic repercussions on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which rely heavily on Turkish support.

In Wednesday's hearing, Schiff continued to press Rice on her own opinion about the early 20th century violence.

"You come out of academia. Is there any historic debate, outside of Turkey; is there any reputable historian that you are aware of that takes issue with the fact that the murder of a million and a half Armenians constituted genocide?" he asked Rice, a former professor at Stanford University.

"Congressman, I come out of academia, but I'm Secretary of State now, and I think the best way to proceed is for the United States not to be in the position of making this judgment," she responded.

Darfur: Brownback Urges Action to End Genocide

A press release from Senator Sam Brownback

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback today testified before a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing and urged greater U.S. action to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

"The American people have shown their compassion by calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur," said Brownback. "More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and more than 2.5 million have been displaced. I encourage all Americans, from lawmakers to civilians, to do their part to end the genocide in Darfur."

Brownback today encouraged state governors to help end the genocide in Darfur by divesting their state's public pension funds from companies that assist or do business with the Sudanese regime. Six states (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, and Oregon) have already passed divestment legislation. Earlier this month, the Kansas State Senate unanimously passed Sudan divestment legislation; the legislation is now awaiting approval from the Kansas State House.

Brownback continued, "Sudanese President Bashir has made clear his unwillingness to cooperate with diplomatic efforts to bring peacekeepers into Darfur to protect innocent lives. We must intensify our efforts to end the genocide in Darfur by taking more coercive actions, including tough sanctions and divestment."

Brownback cosponsored S. 831, the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007, which would authorize states and local governments to prohibit investment of state assets in any company that has a qualifying business relationship with Sudan.

Chad: US Presses Chad to Accept UN Peacekeeping Force

From VOA

A U.S. State Department official says the United States is pressing Chad to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force to help secure regional stability. The official told Congress the violence in the neighboring Darfur region of Sudan has spread over the border into Chad. VOA's Deborah Tate reports from Capitol Hill.

In testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For African Affairs James Swan underscored the importance of having a U.N. peacekeeping force in Chad and the Central African Republic, where ethnic violence has spilled over the borders from Sudan's Darfur region.

"Our primary focus at this point is in supporting a robust U.N. peacekeeping operation for Chad and Central African Republic that would focus both on protecting civilians and also deterring cross-border attack," said Swan.

"We believe the presence of such a mission, and particularly the execution of its civilian protection and monitoring mission, would lead to a reduction in violence," he added.

The government in the Central African Republic is willing to accept such a mission, but as Swan noted, Chad is resisting the idea.

"We were disappointed by the Chadian government's recent indications of concern over the military component of the proposed mission, and, specifically, the deployment of an advanced mission," he said. "We are continuing to engage President [Idriss] Deby to convince him to accept a military force as part of this package."

Swan said, if the international community finds it difficult to contribute large numbers of troops to such a mission, the United States would support a smaller force, backed by heavy equipment.

"We recognize that, with already 100,000 international peacekeeping troops currently deployed worldwide, that force generation for the Chad-CAR mission is going to be a challenge," said Swan.

"Therefore, if it becomes necessary, we are willing to consider alternative options, including those that might involve a slight decrease in the number of troops, in exchange for greater logistical support and equipment, including helicopters that would keep the force agile and still muscular," he continued.

Swan will visit Chad and the Central African Republic next week.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Swan says poor governance is a major cause of Chadian instability. He says U.S. policy toward Chad emphasizes democratic reform, respect for human rights and transparent governance.

Swan also said the violence in Chad has forced relief organizations to reduce their presence in the country.

The president of Refugees International, Ken Bacon, told the Senate panel that the international community must do more to help those displaced by the violence in Chad.

"Although the United Nations is working to improve humanitarian services for refugees in Darfur, aid for the internally displaced populations in eastern Chad has been completely inadequate," said Ken Bacon.

International Crisis Group Senior Adviser John Prendergast called for the United States to take a more active role in seeking a political solution to the region's conflicts.

"The level of U.S. engagement has to be expanded, I think, exponentially, coordinated much more multilaterally to achieve any headway in ending the violence," said John Prendergast.

"The United States should establish a conflict resolution cell in the region that focuses not only on this conflict cluster, but also on another one - the damaging one that involves the Congo and northern Uganda and southern Sudan," he added.

The chairman of the Senate panel, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, has introduced a resolution calling for a comprehensive strategy to bring peace and stability to the region.

The measure would have the United States develop, fund and implement a plan to protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian operations, contain and reduce violence and contribute conditions for sustainable peace in eastern Chad, Central African Republic, and Darfur, Sudan.

Darfur/Chad/CAR: Crisis Brewing

From AFP

A "perfect storm of violence" is spilling from Sudan into Chad and Central African Republic (CAR), creating a possible new humanitarian crisis, a senior US official told a US Congress panel Tuesday.

Inter-ethnic violence which has plagued Sudan for years is now roiling the two countries bordering its western Darfur province, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Swan told lawmakers.

Swan told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Africa that millions of lives could be in jeopardy in the emerging humanitarian crisis.

"This rise in communal tensions, coupled by a security vacuum, has left local populations vulnerable to attacks by ethnic militias that engage in violence to settle scores, loot villages and raid cattle and livestock," he said.

As in Sudan's Darfur region, where ethnic Arab Janjaweed militias have led ruthless raids that have dispossessed and displaced hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, violence in neighboring Chad for the most part "seems to be conducted by Chadian Arabs," Swan said.

"The recent increase in violence in Chad has endangered the lives of civilians, who are subject to attack by rebel groups, government forces and ethnic militias, and has reduced the number of secure humanitarian corridors," he said.

Swan said that recent travelers to the Central African Republic report a "grave humanitarian crisis" brewing there as well.

He added that humanitarian aid groups working in both countries have curtailed their efforts because of the growing security risks.

"Attacks on civilians are widespread in both Chad and CAR, and have left thousands of civilians without livelihood, shelter or food."

Swan said deployment of UN peacekeepers to Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic offers the best chance of protecting civilians and fostering regional stability.

"Our position remains that UN peacekeeping forces in Darfur, eastern Chad and northeastern CAR remain essential," said Swan.

"The United States' priorities in Chad and CAR include limiting the regional impact of the Darfur conflict, fostering stability, protecting civilians, refugees, internally displaced persons and humanitarian workers, and further transformational diplomacy by promoting political reform and good governance."

Chad/Darfur: U.S. Official Warns Aid Organizations Pulling Back

From the AP [related to the previous post]

A U.S. State Department official said Tuesday that recent ethnic violence in Chad has forced relief organizations to cut staffing by half and limited their ability to care for refugees from the neighboring Darfur region of Sudan.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Swan said that the United States and allies are pushing the Chadian government to accept an international military force to keep peace between rival political and ethnic groups, but that so far the country's government has resisted the suggestion.

Swan was speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing focusing on violence in Chad and the Central African Republic, which has received less attention than the conflict in Darfur.

He said that the violence in Darfur, which has lead to more than 200,000 deaths and the displacement of 2.5 million people in recent years, has spilled over and cannot be treated separately from conflict in the two other countries.

The president of the Central African Republic has already announced that he is willing to accept U.N. peacekeepers as part of a proposed force that would also operate in Chad.

Swan said that given the difficulty of getting countries to contribute large numbers of troops, the United States is urging the U.N. Security Council to approve a smaller force backed by heavy equipment including helicopters that would allow troops to respond quickly to outbreaks of violence over a large area.

Violence in Chad has been fueled by economic disparity as a result of oil revenues controlled by the government that are not being distributed. The United States is pushing for government reform.

"Because we recognize that poor governance is a major cause of Chadian instability, we have emphasized the importance of democratic reform, respect for human rights, dialogue, and transparent governance," he said.

Darfur/Chad/CAR: The Regional Impact of the Crisis

Remarks from Senator Russ Feingold at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs Hearing on Chad and the Central African Republic Hearing on The Regional Impact of the Darfur Crisis [See also the testimony of witnesses: James Swan, Ken Bacon and John Prendergast]

On behalf of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, I welcome all of you to the second hearing of this Subcommittee in the 110th Congress. I would like to offer a special welcome to my colleague, Senator Sununu, who has already demonstrated a dedicated commitment to Africa in his first couple months as Ranking Member of this Subcommittee.

By now we are all aware of the tragedy unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan. More than two and a half years ago, my colleagues and I were among the first to condemn the atrocities in Darfur as genocide and since then, Congress has appropriated more than $1.5 billion to ease the suffering of innocent Darfurians. The U.S. government and many other concerned states -- acting alone as well as through the UN and the African Union -- have intervened with diplomatic, humanitarian, human rights, and development assistance, efforts driven in large part by effective grassroots activism.

Despite these ongoing and well-intentioned efforts, today in Darfur millions remain displaced, and at least 200,000 are dead. Humanitarian space continues to shrink and peacekeepers, aid workers, and human rights actors are increasingly the targets of violent crimes. Perhaps most worrisome is the Sudanese Government’s ongoing denial of the crimes and crisis in the west. Just this morning on the Today Show, Sudanese President Bashir claimed that rape “doesn’t exist. We don’t have it.” He went on to allege that the United States was fabricating evidence of atrocities in Darfur just as it supposedly had before invading Iraq, implying that the Americans have ulterior motives in seeking to end the violence in Darfur.

In the meantime, we are seeing the brutal tactics of Darfur – and their tragic consequences –transferred across the porous border into eastern Chad and the Central Africa Republic. Even before the recent outbreak of hostilities in the north, the Central African Republic was suffering extreme poverty and deemed by the UN’s Office of Humanitarian Assistance as “one of the world's most neglected emergencies.” I visited the Iriba refugee camp in eastern Chad in January of 2005 and was struck by the rising inflows of Darfurian refugees. During that same visit to Chad, I also noted the growing disillusionment with President Deby’s government and lack of democratic space for political change. My conclusion from this trip was that Chadians outside the government were preoccupied with the problems of poverty and rural development, but it worried me that this was not a major concern of the Chadian government, nor was it at the top tier of the U.S.-Chad bilateral relationship. Political unrest in Chad has sparked violence that has displaced more than one hundred thousand Chadians, adding to refugees from Sudan and the Central African Republic in crowded camps, and creating a downward spiral of security and humanitarian conditions throughout the region.

Last month, Senator Sununu and I introduced a resolution to highlight the destabilizing impact of the ongoing violence in the Darfur region of Sudan on neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. Each of these countries is struggling to cope with security and humanitarian challenges of their own, but the spillover of rebels, weapons, and brutal tactics – along with the flood of refugees and internally displaced persons that such violence creates -- across Sudan’s western border has exacerbated these emergencies. As long as these conflicts persist, the crisis in Darfur will be prolonged -- and vice versa.

No effort to restore peace and stability to this bloodied region in the heart of Africa can succeed unless we commit ourselves to a coordinated, comprehensive approach. Tribal rivalries are not constrained by national boundaries, so neither should we pursue localized solutions to what has become a regional conflict. That was the motivation for our bipartisan resolution calling on the United States government and the international community to promptly develop, fund, and implement a comprehensive regional strategy to protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian operations, contain and reduce violence, and contribute to conditions for sustainable peace in eastern Chad, the Central African Republic, and western Sudan. This hearing will explore the need for an integrated approach to peace in this region.

Sudan: Two Women to be Stoned for Adultery

From Reuters

wo Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after a trial in which they had no lawyer and which used Arabic, not their first language, the rights group Amnesty International said.

Sadia Idriss Fadul was sentenced on February 13 and Amouna Abdallah Daldoum on March 6 and their sentences could be carried out at any time, the London-based group said in a statement released late on Monday.

North Sudan implements Islamic sharia law.

"The women had no lawyer during their trial and were not able to defend themselves, as their first languages are those of their ethnic groups," Amnesty said.

Both women are from non-Arab tribes but the proceedings were in Arabic and no interpreter was provided, Amnesty said. Their trial took place in central Al Gezira state.

"One of the women, Sadia Idriss Fadul, has one of her children with her in prison," Amnesty said. Faysal el-Bagir, a Sudanese human rights activist, said sentences of death by stoning were rare, "but we have heard that in this area there have been other such judgments."

The male accused in Fadul's case was let off because there was not enough evidence against him. Witnesses are usually required to gain a conviction and forensic tests are not normally used in such cases.

Under Sudan's penal code, anyone who is married and has sex outside wedlock shall be punished by execution by stoning. If they are unmarried, they are lashed, Amnesty said.

Darfur: Sudanese Objections Mean UN Force ‘Long Way’ Off

From the UN New Center

There is still “a long way to go” before the United Nations and the Sudanese Government can resolve their differences over the situation in the war-torn Darfur region and the proposed speedy deployment of a hybrid UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force to protect civilians and stop the bloodshed there, the top peacekeeping official warned today.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told a Security Council meeting that the latest written response from Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s letter detailing the planned force indicated there may be “fundamental strategic differences” over Darfur.

“We still have, unfortunately, a long way to go because there may be some fundamental misunderstandings on what are the expectations of the Government of Sudan and what is on offer,” he told journalists following the closed-door meeting.

Mr. Guéhenno said the international community has already “waited much too long,” given the level of suffering across Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others forced from their homes since 2003. A peace deal signed last year by some of the parties failed to end the fighting between Government forces, allied Janjaweed militias and rebel groups, and the conflict is starting to spill over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

“We do believe that it’s important to have a strong peacekeeping presence there,” he said. “We believe that it’s important to have a political process, but that political process needs to be supported by a solid peacekeeping presence. One supports the other. One without the other will not be sustainable.”

Last week Mr. Ban also expressed frustration that Mr. Bashir had raised a number of reservations on ideas relating to the hybrid force and other joint measures involving the UN and the AU to bring peace to Darfur, an impoverished region the size of France on Sudan’s western flank.

Mr. Guéhenno said Council members must now play a role in helping the Sudanese Government to overcome its differences on the hybrid force and related issues.

Asked if there was a timeline for intervention, given the dire humanitarian situation, the Under-Secretary-General said: “The timeline has been broken many times. I think we should have [had] an answer yesterday.”

Mr. Guéhenno added the UN would also continue to discuss the need for a separate UN peacekeeping force in Chad with Government officials from that country.

Today’s Council meeting took place on the eve of the first visit to the region by the UN’s new humanitarian chief. John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, is scheduled to depart tomorrow on a two-week mission to Sudan, Chad and the CAR.

Mr. Holmes will begin his trip in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, before heading to Juba, in southern Sudan, and then to Darfur in the country’s west. The next leg will be in eastern Chad, with the final stage in northern CAR and that country’s capital, Bangui.

Meanwhile, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reports that armed attacks on villages continue in Darfur, with the latest strike against a village north of the West Darfur provincial capital of El Geneina. Villagers in the nearby Jebel Moon area have begun fortifying their defences in anticipation of similar attacks.

Also in West Darfur, some 550 Chadian refugees have asked to move away from border areas because of security concerns, with the first batch of 220 successfully moved over the weekend to the camp run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at Um Shalaya.

From the AP

The United Nations will never accept a rejection from Sudan's president to a strong peacekeeping operation in Darfur because the conflict is hurting millions of people in the region, the U.N. peacekeeping chief said Monday.

Jean-Marie Guehenno briefed the U.N. Security Council on President Omar al-Bashir's rejection of all but a very limited role for the United Nations in supporting African Union troops in the vast area of western Sudan.

Guehenno told reporters that he was pessimistic about a quick solution, though a beefed-up peacekeeping force is desperately needed.

“We'll never take any reaction as a rejection,” Guehenno said. “We can't afford that and the people in Darfur can't afford that. ... We are prepared to clarify any detail in what is on offer.”

[edit]

Guehenno said the situation on the ground “requires urgent action.”

“Every week that passes, there is more suffering, there are people in camps, there is continued suffering of people in Darfur,” he said.

In his letter, al-Bashir was very supportive of a joint U.N.-AU effort to get rebel groups that refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement last May back to the negotiating table.

But Guehenno said that wasn't enough.

“It's true that recently there has been an improvement in the situation but fundamentally the situation remains extremely bad in Darfur so we do believe that it's important to have a strong peacekeeping presence there.”

The conflict in Darfur has the potential to engulf not only Sudan, but also neighboring Chad and Central African Republic, Guehenno said.

“We see refugees going as far as Cameroon so it's a situation really that is hurting millions of people in the region,” Guehenno said.

Darfur: Crisis Has Activist 'Angry All the Time'

From USATODAY

Eric Reeves was among the first to realize what was happening in Darfur, the first to crunch numbers that showed the extent of the crime, the first to cry genocide.

After militias loyal to Sudan's government attacked villagers four years ago to stop a rebellion in the country's western province, Reeves argued that Darfuris were dying not by the thousands in a civil war, but by tens of thousands in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The ensuing outcry has helped prevent what the United Nations calls "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" from being even worse.

"Not a single person in the world has done as much for Darfur as Eric Reeves," says Samantha Power, a Harvard expert on genocide. By fueling the Save Darfur movement, she says, he's helped save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Yet in an interview at his home near Smith College, where he teaches English, Reeves says he's never been more frustrated. "It's exceedingly painful to see the international community do so little to stop this genocide by attrition," he says. "I'm angry all the time."

Since the failure of a U.S.-sponsored peace plan last year, fighting has intensified and spread into Chad and the Central African Republic. The rebel movement has splintered. The Janjaweed, as the Arab militias are known, still roam the countryside.

Attacks on relief workers — by combatants and bandits — have forced some agencies to suspend or curtail operations. Most plan to withdraw entirely if things get worse.

In that case, Reeves worries, deaths could skyrocket, especially among the 2.5 million uprooted Darfuris (of a population of 6 million). Overall conflict-related deaths — from violence, disease, malnutrition — may have reached 500,000, he says. That estimate is twice as high as that used by most major news organizations.

Reeves has concluded that the only solution is to pressure China, chief buyer of Sudan oil, with a protest campaign targeting what he calls Beijing's "Genocide Olympics." The goal: get China, host of the 2008 Summer Games, to pressure Sudan to admit U.N. peacekeepers. Last year, the U.N. Security Council approved such a mission, but Khartoum has objected.

Some advocacy groups, such as the Save Darfur Coalition, say shaming China won't work. Reeves is adamant: "We have no other arrows in the quiver."

The man who would save Darfur has never been there. His academic specialty is Renaissance literature, not international affairs. Although he advocates international military intervention in Darfur, he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

And he's had another fight. In early 2003, when Darfur exploded, he learned he had leukemia.

At first, because Khartoum restricted access to outside observers and discouraged mortality studies, it was unclear how many were dying. Reeves kept hearing horror stories. "I thought, 'Someone has to take charge here,' " he says.

He began to extrapolate death estimates from existing studies and reports. In early 2004, when the United Nations estimated that 3,000 people had died as the result of the conflict, Reeves argued that the toll was 10 times higher. Six months later, when the U.N. count reached 10,000 people, Reeves was saying 120,000.

In a February 2004 opinion piece in The Washington Post, Reeves made what may have been the first claim in U.S. mainstream media that what was happening in Darfur was genocide, as defined by an international treaty signed in 1948.

Seven months later, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said that what was happening in Darfur was genocide and that the government of Sudan bore responsibility — a charge Khartoum has rejected.

Reeves has emerged as an authority on Darfur. He's testified three times before Congress, published more than 100 opinion articles, given many news media interviews and provided advice to celebrity activists such as Mia Farrow, George Clooney and Don Cheadle.

His main effort is a weekly 6,000-word blog, based on a mix of official information, field situation reports, sources in the U.S. government and international organizations, and e-mails from relief workers in Darfur.

It's mandatory reading, even for those it skewers. "I read Eric Reeves religiously," Charles Snyder, head of the State Department's Sudan bureau, once told reporters, "even if it gives me heartburn."

Reeves can be "shrill," Power admits. He called former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan guilty of "cowardly diffidence" toward Khartoum.

"Eric is screaming where others are speaking softly or mincing words," says David Pressman, a human rights lawyer.

Some advocates for Darfur disagree with Reeves. Harvard-based Africa expert Alex de Waal says proponents of outside military intervention without Sudanese permission have a "salvation delusion," because U.N. troops can't stop civil war or impose peace. Similarly, many who deplore what's happening in Darfur, including the United Nations and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders, decline to call the situation a genocide — a term that compels nations that signed the genocide treaty to stop it.

The suffering in Darfur is "all I care about," Reeves explains. "I go to sleep at night thinking about it. I can't get it out of my mind. I'm way too close to it. It's not a healthy way to live."

In a time of mass murder, he takes each death personally and says each must be counted.

"We will look back years from now and wonder how, even though we saw what was happening, we still did nothing," he says.

He works 40 to 60 hours a week on Darfur. He's used two sabbaticals, taken three semesters of unpaid leave and two others at half pay and refinanced his house. Speaking fees ($1,000 a speech) go for Darfur relief.

He has let old friendships lapse. ("Most people will talk about Darfur for 10 minutes, but they don't want to do it for an hour.") His wood-working shop gathers dust. He would love to be able to teach a course on writer Alice Munro, or just to read the Munro biography he got for Christmas.

He tries to find time for his wife and their two daughters. For the younger one, a college senior, his Darfur work was "hard, hard, hard," Reeves says. "It's a struggle to see a parent so consumed."

Even leukemia — which killed his brother in 2000 — hasn't stopped Reeves.

Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights recalls visiting Reeves in the hospital when he was undergoing chemotherapy. She found him in bed with his laptop open and his cellphone at his ear, doing an interview while hooked up to an IV drip. A nurse waited to give him an injection.

Reeves says that although his red blood cell count has returned to normal, he expects the disease to return. His Darfur work, he says, is a consolation: "Some cancer patients say, 'Oh, what's the point?' I've never lacked meaningful work."

Darfur: Sudan Cancels Donor Meeting on Darfur

From Reuters

Donors began meeting on Tuesday to pledge money to rebuild Sudan after a devastating north-south civil war, but the event was overshadowed by the separate conflict in Darfur being left off the agenda.

Khartoum is at loggerheads with the international community over Darfur, a four-year-old conflict which Sudan's largest donor Washington calls genocide, a term Khartoum rejects.

The government refused to allow Darfur to be on the agenda and at the last minute cancelled a compromise meeting to be held separately on Monday, U.N. officials and diplomats said.

Donors have already pledged some $4.5 billion to rebuild Sudan, ruined by two decades of civil war, after a north-south peace deal in January 2005. But most of that money has not appeared and the south complains much has been redirected to Darfur.

The meeting -- dubbed the Sudan Consortium -- had hoped to address that issue, in addition to getting the original pledges renewed and securing fresh promises of cash.

But the cancellation of the Darfur meeting meant some donors withdrew high-level participation.

"While it is unfortunate that the government has chosen to cancel today's meeting on Darfur humanitarian access issues, the path to resolving these concerns remains clear," said a U.S. statement released at the opening ceremony late on Monday night.

The Darfur conflict began in early 2003 when rebels took up arms, accusing the government of neglect. Khartoum then armed brutal militia known as Janjaweed, who murdered, pillaged and raped civilians. Experts estimate 200,000 have been killed and millions uprooted from their homes.

The United States said Sudan should be more generous and faster in handing out visas to aid workers in Darfur, should remove costly levies on humanitarian equipment and release assets held up in customs.

Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister Kosti Manyebi said the government was worried the Sudan Consortium would be "hijacked" by Darfur's political issues and had requested it be postponed until after the donor meeting.

"(The government) is happy to address it after the Sudan Consortium," he told Reuters.

Donors were furious at the last minute cancellation of the Darfur meeting and many focused on Darfur during their presentations at the opening ceremony.

Chad: Hundreds of Refugees Taken to U.N. Camp in Darfur

From the AP

More than 200 Chadians, forced to flee to neighboring Darfur because of violence in their own country, have been moved to a camp further inside the volatile Sudanese region, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

Ron Redmond, a spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said the agency was preparing for a further flight of civilians away from the lawless border between Chad and Darfur.

Some 20,000 Chadians already have crossed to Darfur since the end of 2005, UNHCR said. The migration has occurred despite unabated violence and human rights abuses committed in Darfur by government-backed janjaweed militias and rebels. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced by four years of fighting in Darfur.

"The high commissioner has been warning for months about the spreading insecurity throughout that region, with Darfur as the epicenter, affecting eastern Chad and the Central African Republic to the south," Redmond told The Associated Press.

He said general lawlessness in the region was causing people to flee in both directions across the unmarked frontier.

The Chadians were fleeing "janjaweed-style attacks, some of them by domestic groups, some of them believed to have come across the border from Darfur," Redmond said.

Even as some of the assailants could be based in Darfur, Redmond said more Chadians might be forced to seek refuge in the region.

"They go in whichever direction is safest at the time," Redmond said. "At the time they couldn't go west because of these marauding groups."

Darfur: Aid Workers Access Diminishing

From Reuters

Humanitarian access is shrinking rapidly in Darfur where relief workers are attacked and intimidated, a U.N. humanitarian official said shortly before making his first trip to the region on Tuesday.

Briton John Holmes, the humanitarian and emergency relief coordinator who took up his post this month, plans to go to Khartoum, Juba in the south and Darfur in the west. His 10-day tour takes him to Chad and the Central African Republic, which have borne spillovers from the conflict in Darfur.

Holmes said in an interview with two reporters that aid workers were barred from many areas "more or less all the time" sometimes because of government operations, other times by rebel fighters.

In July 2005, international relief workers were able to reach some 90 percent of civilians in need. Now this is reduced to 64 percent, U.N. figures show.

The Darfur conflict began in early 2003 when African rebels took up arms, accusing the government of neglect. Khartoum then armed brutal militia known as Janjaweed, who murdered, pillaged and raped civilians. Now rebel groups, split into factions, are committing their own atrocities.

There have been "quite a lot of attacks from everyone" and "no one is innocent" whether the rebels, the government, the Janjaweed or bandits, Holmes said.

Some 4 million people have been uprooted because of the conflict, up from 1.08 million in April 2004. At least 200,000 have fled to impoverished Chad.

Holmes said he hoped for cooperation from the Khartoum government, including expediting and extending visas and getting supplies out of customs -- as well as security of the aid workers themselves, now numbering some 13,000 and spending about $1 billion annually.

"It is the responsibility of the government or whoever is in control in any particular area to protect the humanitarian workers who are looking after the people," Holmes said.

Darfur: Camps 'Almost Full'

From the BBC

Camps for those displaced by fighting in Sudan's Darfur region are almost full, the UN says.

Several camps are having to turn away new groups of refugees, a report for UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) says.

[edit]

"IDP (internally displaced people) camps are reaching full capacity due to the continuing population displacements," the Sudan Humanitarian Overview report for February says.

"In North Darfur, As Salaam camp has been declared at full capacity, due to the lack of water sources to sustain additional incoming IDPs," the report says.

"Given that Abu Shouk has already been closed to additional IDPs and that Zam Zam is very close to its maximum capacity, a new location for a camp near El Fasher has to be found."

Darfur: Sudan Suspends Cooperation With ICC Regarding Kony

From The Monitor

THE Sudanese government will suspend all cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to accusations that Sudanese officials have committed war crimes in Darfur.

The action will also affect Khartoum's commitment to cooperate in the arrest of rebel leader Joseph Kony and his commanders in the Lord's Resistance Army who are under indictment by the Hague-based court.

"We had extended our cooperation with the ICC for some time, but now the situation is completely different,'' Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told journalists yesterday in Geneva where he was attending a UN Human Rights Council meeting.

"It's not even a question of cooperation anymore, it's a question that they (the ICC) want to try Sudanese citizens, which is absolutely nonsensical,'' he said.

On October 3, 2005, the ICC, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the arrest of Kony and four LRA commanders. The rebel group had been operating from South Sudan for years and had also moved into northeastern Congo.

Daily Monitor has seen the document signed by Abdul Kassim, Sudan's ambassador in The Hague, that commits the signatories to arrest Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and commanders Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and Raska Lukwiya, who has since died.

The other four are wanted in connection with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during their 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda.

Uganda's Justice Minister Khiddu Makubuya said he couldn't comment on possible implications of the decision to suspend the agreement until receiving an official note from Khartoum.

Regional Cooperation Minister Isaac Musumba acknowledged that the suspension of cooperation between Sudan and the ICC "has huge implications for the dynamics of the Kony case."

Genocide: Turkey Prods U.S. Against Resolution

From The Washington Times

Inside the tomblike confines of the Armenian Genocide Museum, a haunting narrative of images and words unfolds. A list is posted at tour's end of nations that have officially recognized the tragedy, minus one major endorsement: the United States.

U.S. lawmakers have introduced nonbinding resolutions in Congress that would declare up to 1.5 million Armenians victims of genocide at the hands of Turkish forces almost a century ago.

Support is reported to be strong enough in the House to pass the measure if it goes to a vote; the Senate introduced a similar resolution last week with 21 co-sponsors.

Historians and analysts here in the Armenian capital say recognition from Washington is long overdue because evidence validating the case for genocide is "clear-cut, more than factual, and very obvious."

But Turkey's priority status as a vital strategic ally in a troublesome region stands in the way.

"Although Turkey needs the U.S. more, the U.S also needs Turkey right now ... so it's not realistic to think the government will formally acknowledge [the genocide]," said Hagop Avedikian, editor of Azg newspaper.

He noted that every April 24, a day of observance, President Bush "highlights the genocide and explains it without using the word."

In the past month, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Chief of the General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit and a parliamentary delegation have met with U.S. lawmakers and Bush administration officials in an attempt to derail the resolution.

Mr. Gul was quoted as saying the delivery of a U.S. genocide resolution would inflict "lasting damage" on bilateral relations.

Such statements were not lost on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who last week wrote a joint letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, and other senior members warning that the measure would hurt national security interests.

Passage of the House resolution, they wrote, "could harm American troops in the field, constrain our ability to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and significantly damage our efforts to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey."

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried has warned that Turkey might respond by closing Incirlik air base, used for operations in nearby Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Turkish military severed all ties with the French military and terminated defense contracts after the French National Assembly voted in October to criminalize the denial of genocide.

The Israeli Knesset killed a motion to discuss recognition earlier this month, fearing a political crisis with Ankara.

Failure to pass the resolution would be "too bad because it could be a very catalytic moment for rapid recognition by other states," said Hayk Demoyan, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.

Zimbabwe: Gov't Warns Western Diplomats

From the Online NewsHour

GWEN IFILL: And today, Mugabe's government threatened to expel Western diplomats.

Now for more on the Zimbabwe story, I spoke earlier this evening with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who covers southern Africa for National Public Radio. She joined us from Johannesburg.

Charlayne, welcome back to the program.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT, NewsHour Special Correspondent: Thank you, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: So as far as you can tell, what triggered this latest conflict?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you know, the opposition was holding a prayer meeting, because political rallies have been banned. You know, there's an election in 2008, and the speculation is that the government is keen to isolate and keep contained the opposition.

So they held this prayer meeting, and some people were arrested, some people were beaten. At least that was what the story was. And so Morgan Tsvangirai went to the jail to see what was going on, and that is where he was attacked.

As you know, he is the leader of one of the opposition factions of the Movement for Democratic Change.

GWEN IFILL: He has long had his disputes with Robert Mugabe, hasn't he?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Oh, yes, he has. And I think, you know, that part of the problem -- he challenged the elections.

I mean, the Movement for Democratic Change was born in 2000, when a group of opposition people, the first real opposition, went up against the government and defeated the constitutional referendum that was heavily supported by the government. And that's when they began to emerge.

But the government targeted him more or less ever since. And after the last election, he was accused of treason. And I think that that's one of the things that has weakened the opposition, because he spent over a year fighting this charge.

If he had been convicted, he would have faced the death penalty. So that took a lot of steam out of him, as well as out of the party. But now, you know, he seems to be coming back, even in this most difficult moment where he has been beaten half to death. He seems to have gotten a new energy that sometimes was lacking in previous months.

Darfur: Sudan’s al-Bashir Denies Role in Violence

From MSNBC [Video of the interview is available as well]

Amid intense international pressure to stop the atrocities in Darfur, the president of Sudan reacted forcefully Monday, denying his government is complicit in ethnic cleansing and accusing the United States of having ulterior motives against Sudan.

We have reported before on the tragedy of Sudan's Darfur region, where it has been estimated that hundreds of thousands have been killed in what the United States calls genocide.

On Monday, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir gave NBC's Ann Curry an unprecedented two-hour, no-holds-barred interview — his first television interview to a Western journalist in three years:

Ann Curry: Mr. President, I have this map from the U.S. Department of State that shows more than a thousand villages in the Darfur region — more than a thousand burned.
And the question is, how can this be done by Arab militias without the support of the Sudanese government? This is shocking.

Omar al-Bashir: What do you think about the picture that Colin Powell presented before the national security that confirmed and illustrated the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What do you think about it?

Curry: You're saying this is not true?

Al-Bashir: This picture is the same fabrication and the same picture as the ones Colin Powell presented about Iraq.

Curry: The International Criminal Court is moving, as you know, to summon one of your top ministers in your government for crimes against humanity in Darfur in 2003 and 2004.

Al-Bashir: We have judicial system in Sudan. Anyone who committed a war crime, anti-human crime or any other crime will be locked up.

Curry: Do you believe he is guilty of crimes against humanity?

Al-Bashir: No, not at all. I'm sure that he did not participate in any war crimes. The same forces behind the attack on Iraq are trying to do the same in Sudan.

Curry: I myself have spoken to the people in Darfur — people who have been shot and burned and women who have been raped.

Al-Bashir: Yes, there have been villages burned, but not to the extent you are talking about. People have been killed because there is war. It is not in the Sudanese culture or people of Darfur to rape. It doesn't exist. We don't have it.

Al-Bashir also accused the United States of trying to seize Darfur's oil and gas riches.

"The goal is to put Darfur under their custody," he said. "Separating the region of Darfur from Sudan."

President al-Bashir accused the United States of angling to get access to what he says are Darfur's rich oil reserves. He also addressed how Sudan shared information about Osama bin Laden with the United States before 9/11 and that this deep intelligence relationship continues. We will bring you that Tuesday night.

Darfur: Upcoming NBC Interview with al-Bashir

A post by Ann Curry on MSNBC.com

How does one interview a man accused of unleashing genocide?

Flying now to Sudan, in a matter of hours I am to come face to face with President Omar al-Bashir, whom the world lays most of the blame for the atrocities in Darfur.

[edit]

So how exactly am I to face this man? How will I exact the truth, and at the same time keep the horror that I saw on the Darfur border from being revealed in my own eyes? I was never good at poker. I am gearing up for one of the greatest challenges of my career.

11:37 a.m. EDT update: We just finished an unprecedented two-hour, no-holds-barred interview with President al-Bashir. He was emphatic that the world misunderstands what is happening in Darfur. We will air this interview on Nightly News, TODAY and Dateline this week, and will post it as soon as we can here on MSNBC.com.

Darfur: Camps Attract New Economic Migrants

From Reuters

Ibrahim Shousha is unlike many who fled their Darfur homes in fear to squat in one of miserable camps in Sudan's troubled western region.

His large fenced compound in Dorti camp outside West Darfur's main town is made from new mats of straw laced together, he has two metal beds and clothes and parcels of food and goods litter the sandy floor of his hut.

Nearby, Darfuris who arrived at the same time two months ago were living in flimsy plastic sheets held up by sticks which feebly tried to keep out the red dust blowing in the wind.

They fled attacks on their homes with no more than the clothes on their backs whereas Shousha is part of a new type of refugee in Darfur.

"I came with donkeys which carried my things," said Shousha whose nephew was already studying at el-Geneina University.

"We had no harvest so we came here."

[edit]

Many new arrivals in Darfur's camps are economic migrants, not driven by fear for their lives, but by the hardship the conflict has caused.

"We heard there were aid agencies working here so we came here to get food aid," said Shousha when asked why he came to the camp from his home in the village of Dagok a dozen kilometres (7 miles) away.

Abdallah Mohamed Suleiman, also from Dagok, said he came because "The conditions here are better than in our villages. Here internationals will give us food."

His crops failed and he heard the world's largest aid operation was providing food and shelter. Almost 2.5 million now live in the camps.

While almost 14,000 aid workers try to also give food and blankets and other aid to those in the remote villages cut off from the fighting, limited funds and insecurity means those outside the camps often get less aid than those inside.

Some aid workers expressed concerns that this was attracting people who were more economic migrant than refugee.

The World Food Programme adjusted its feeding programme based on surveys last year. Those in the camps get 100 percent rations. Many of those in remoter villages get 50 percent and some whose harvests have not been so affected receive none.

"The limited available resources will be targeted to ensure that the needs of the population are best met," WFP said in its food targeting policy document.

It is also trying to prevent reliance on aid at the expense of local production and not to affect local market economies.

Suleiman said he had never received food aid in his village so the rationing did not affect him. But the pull of help and the relative safety due to the presence of international aid agencies was a factor in his moving.

[edit]

Shousha said the local sheikh came and recorded their names to get a food ration card, but they had seen none in months. He said he suspected the sheikh was hoarding the cards to collect their food and sell it on.

This has happened in many of Darfur's camps with corrupt camp leaders who call themselves sheikhs at times being found to have up to 70 ration cards instead of just one.

Darfur: Some Arabs Join Rebels

From the AP

Ahmad Salaheddin is an Arab who has crossed the ethnic divide in Darfur's bloody war to fight alongside ethnic African rebels. His fellow rebels jokingly call him a "janjaweed" _ one of the Arab militiamen who are their fiercest enemy.

His presence, along with several other Arabs in a unit of the main rebel group in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army, is a sign of the complexity of the ethnic bloodshed in the western Sudanese region.

The fight in Darfur is usually defined as between Arabs and ethnic Africans: the ethnic Africans launched a rebellion in 2003 and the Arab-led Sudanese government is accused of arming Arab tribesmen in Darfur to help put it down.

The Arab janjaweed militias have since carried out a campaign of violence against ethnic African civilians, killing and raping and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, the United Nations says.

In general, the definition of Arabs vs. ethnic Africans holds true. It is not known how many Arabs have joined the ethnic African rebels, but their numbers are likely minimal. However, the rebels insist instances like Salaheddin are on the rise.

There are also several major Arab tribes that from the start have refused Khartoum's enticements to join the janjaweed. So the government has armed smaller, more impoverished clans for the militias _ disrupting the traditional power structures among the Arab tribes.

In a reflection of the turmoil, infighting and violence among Darfur Arabs has surged in recent months, killing hundreds.

Another complication is that the regular government troops in Darfur fighting the rebellion are mainly ethnic African draftees from other parts of Sudan. The rebels say they do not fear those government troops as much, because they are not enthusiastic fighters and are easier to combat than the janjaweed.

Salaheddin said he joined the mostly African rebels because he was angered at Darfur's underdevelopment and believes the Khartoum government is manipulating Arabs in Darfur.

"They don't care about us any more than they care about the Africans," he told The Associated Press. "In fact, our conditions here are just as bad."

Arab and ethnic African tribes have long competed for scarce resources in Darfur, a vast, semiarid region of western Sudan nearly the size of Texas. There were troubles even before ethnic Africans launched their rebellion, complaining of discrimination at the hands of Khartoum.

But there were also neighborly relations, tightened sometimes by intermarriage.

Saleh Ibrahim _ an SLA fighter from the African Zaghawa tribe, which spearheaded the rebellion _ pointed to his relatively lighter skin and noted that his grandmother was an Arab. But he said all ties had been cut with his Arab cousins since the rebellion began, and that he didn't know their whereabouts.

"It's sad, because we used to get along quite well," he said. "I don't think it would be possible anymore ... Too much blood has been spilled."

The Arab-dominated Sudanese central government in Khartoum denies controlling the janjaweed, whom it describes as bandits. But the International Criminal Court last month accused a senior government official and a janjaweed leader of crimes against humanity and said their campaign was coordinated.

Darfur: Camps Reaching Capacity

From IRIN

Camps for internally displaced persons in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are almost at full capacity due to a continuing influx of people fleeing violence, an assessment report compiled by the United Nations and other aid agencies said.

In North Darfur, As Salaam camp cannot take any more displaced people due to water shortages, while Abu Shouk has been closed to newcomers and Zam Zam is very close to maximum capacity, said the Sudan Humanitarian Overview for February. The report is prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), other UN agencies and non-governmental partners.

According to the report, 30,000 people were displaced across Darfur in February, bringing the total number of people who have fled violence in the region since January to 80,000.

The largest displacements took place in South Darfur, where Sudanese government and militia attacks sent 25,000 into the bush. In West Darfur, 12,595 have been displaced, while North Darfur reported 11,500 displaced since January.

Sexual and physical assaults on civilians continue to be reported daily, and access restrictions, bureaucracy and targeted violence impede humanitarian operations.

According to the report, access for aid agencies in Darfur dropped to 64 percent in January and 20 percent of the affected people could not be reached by any humanitarian agency. "An average of 2.45 million people, 70 percent of the conflict-affected population, remain food insecure," it noted.

The report, however, noted that clashes between government and rebel forces had fallen in February compared with December and January, as had aerial bombings.

Humanitarian activities resumed in Tawilla and Khazan Tungur, North Darfur, but lack of sufficient safety guarantees delayed resumption in Gereida, South Darfur.

Darfur: Sudan Will Suspend Cooperation With ICC

It is not as if Khartoum has been particularly cooperative with the ICC up until now - From the AP

Sudan has decided to suspend all cooperation with the International Criminal Court in response to its accusations that Sudanese officials were involved in war crimes in Darfur, the justice minister and a pro-government newspaper said Sunday.

Sudan has long refused to hand over suspects to the international court for trial on Darfur war crimes. Still, Khartoum has cooperated with the court on some levels, in particular by allowing its investigators to visit Sudan several times in recent years. The government did not specify whether it would no longer grant them entry.

"We had extended our cooperation with the ICC for some time, but now the situation is completely different," Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told The Associated Press on the telephone from Geneva, where he was attending a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting.

"It’s not even a question of cooperation anymore, it’s a question that they (the ICC) want to try Sudanese citizens, which is absolutely nonsensical," the justice minister said.

[edit]

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir chaired a meeting of Cabinet ministers and high-ranking judicial officials that decided to cancel cooperation with the court, the Al-Ray Al-Aam daily newspaper, deemed close to government circles, reported Sunday.

The presidential meeting turned down a suggestion from some government officials to send a delegation to The Hague to contest the case with the ICC, the paper said.

Al-Mardi reiterated his government’s stance that the Hague-based ICC has no jurisdiction over Sudanese citizens because Sudan hasn’t ratified the convention creating the international court.

Sudan says it is handling its own investigations into Darfur crimes. The justice minister said both suspects named by the ICC had been fully investigated by Sudanese courts.

"Not a shred of evidence was found against Harun," al-Mardi said. He did not specify the verdict against Kushayb, who is widely reported to control one of the fiercest fringes of the janjaweed in the western Darfur. The ICC prosecution has described Sudan’s efforts to investigate crimes in Darfur as barely more than "lip service."

Darfur: SLM Leader Denies UN Rights Charges

From the Sudan Tribune

Darfur rebel leader denied charges of human rights violations by UN rights report last week. He further said that his group had urged the intervention of the international community to protect and to relief civilians in the troubled region of Darfur and can’t defeat their statement.

Abdelwahid al-Nur, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement welcomed a UN rights Council report condemning the violation of human rights committed against civilians in Darfur. But the dismissed the charges against the rebel movements in the region.

A UN team, headed by Nobel peace laureate, Jody Williams, said in 35-page report that Darfur rebel groups “are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law.”

He reminded that his group was the first to appeal the intervention of the UN and the NGOs on the ground to assist the affected population in the region. ‘How we can appeal world to provide humanitarian aid and we attack those feeding our people, he said.

Al-Nur also denied violation of Human rights. He said that his organization is very keen to be beside the affected people and to defend its rights “our legitimacy emanates from Darfurians because we are their voice and we can not commit atrocities against them.”

He further said that if he is “so popular among IDPs”, this can simply be explained by the action of the SLM among the displaced and the huge effort exerted to relay their voice to the world.

The rebel leader said that the SLM is ready to respond positively to any demand of information in this regard and to collaborate with the international community to arrest authors of any eventual violations in their controlled area.

Darfur: Sudan Must Accept UN Peacekeepers

From VOA

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Sudan must accept a strong international peacekeeping force in its war-torn Darfur region. Mr. Ban made the comment in an exclusive VOA interview. Correspondent Peter Heinlein spoke to Mr. Ban, and reports the secretary-general is making preparations for eventual creation of a U.N.-backed hybrid peace mission.

Mr. Ban told VOA he is consulting with many African leaders to pressure Sudan to live up to an agreement reached with the United Nations and the African Union last November in Addis Ababa. He pointed to growing international frustration at the lack of progress in halting the violence in Darfur, and said he will push the issue further when he meets Arab leaders at a summit later this month in Saudi Arabia.

The three-phase Addis Ababa deal calls for Sudan to allow a so-called "heavy support" package of 3,000 well-equipped U.N. military police into Darfur. They would prepare the way for eventual deployment of a 21,000 - member hybrid force of U.N. and African Union troops. That force would replace the financially-strapped 7,000 - member AU mission currently in Darfur.

In a letter to Mr. Ban this month, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir appeared to renege on the Addis Ababa deal. But the secretary-general told VOA President Bashir must not be allowed to back out of the commitments made in Addis Ababa, and in an earlier Darfur peace agreement reached in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

"It was regrettable that President Bashir has made several reservations to my proposals to deploy a heavy support package and the hybrid peacekeeping operations," said Ban Ki-moon. "This proposal was done in close coordination with the African Union, in accordance with the Addis Ababa and Abuja agreements. This is something they must accommodate."

The secretary general says he will continue to press for a political solution in Darfur that will allow distribution of humanitarian aid to desperately needy people in the region. He has appointed former Swedish foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president Jan Eliasson as his special envoy for the political process. Eliasson will be traveling to Khartoum for talks next week, along with the U.N. humanitarian aid chief, Undersecretary General John Holmes.

In the meantime, Mr. Ban says he is also moving ahead with preparations for the deployment of a military force.

"I have also proposed the nomination of the joint representative and the force commander," said UN secretary-general. "We have laid out all preparations so we will be able to contribute to the resolution of the Darfur issue."

Genocide: Military Officials Worry About Resolution

From Stars & Stripes

Military officials are worried about the fallout if Congress passes a symbolic resolution to recognize the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey as “genocide.”

The Turkish government claims the deaths, which mostly occurred from 1915 to 1918 during World War I, were not genocide but part of civil war, disease and famine as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. Armenians, who originate from Armenia on Turkey’s eastern border, want the deaths acknowledged for historical and moral purposes as atrocities and genocide at the hands of Turks.

Post-empire Turkey, a moderate, Muslim-majority nation and NATO member since 1952, hosts Incirlik Air Base, home to 1,500 U.S. troops and an important cargo and refueling hub. A resolution could sour Turkish public sentiment toward the U.S., possibly leading to restrictions regarding Incirlik and Turkish air space.

“I’m worried about the potential impact to our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Maj. Gen. Robertus Remkes, director of strategy, policy and assessments at the U.S. European Command.

House Resolution 106, introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and backed by House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., among others, could come to a vote in April.

A number of nations have already recognized the deaths as genocide. France passed a similar resolution in October, which the Turks viewed as an insult, and it sparked threats of Turkish boycotts and sanctions against France.

“If you see Turkish public opinion going away from the West, where do you see it going?” Remkes said.

Remkes made his comments as weeklong meetings in Germany were concluding between mid- to senior-level officers from the U.S. and Turkish militaries.

The meetings, which took place in Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Ramstein, were to strengthen ties among the officers, whose jobs are to prepare their respective generals for high- level discussions and decisions. The meetings with their Turkish counterparts were pleasantly frank, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Jordan Thomas, the planning directorate’s Turkey desk officer.

“We didn’t agree on everything, but we walked away saying, ‘Yes, we understand you,’” said Thomas, adding that the next round of talks will be held in Turkey.

A number of analysts agree that the resolution, if passed, could damage relations between the U.S. and one of its most important allies in the volatile region.

“Some 60 percent of all U.S. military equipment destined for Iraq goes through the territory or airspace of Turkey,” according to a February article by F. Stephen Larrabee and Suat Kiniklioglu of Rand Corp.

“If this route to Iraq were restricted or closed entirely, the ability of the United States to effectively combat the insurgency and violent militias in Iraq would be impaired.”

Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar of the Brookings Institution wrote in August that the U.S. and Europe must do what they can to ensure that Turkey sees itself as aligned with the West.

“An Armenian genocide resolution would certainly trigger a tremendous nationalistic backlash in Turkey and a deep rift with the United States,” they wrote.

But Schiff, who like Pelosi has a large Armenian constituency in his congressional district, has said the long-tried resolution needs to finally be passed.

“How can we take effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it occurs?” Schiff said when introducing the bill.

Zimbabwe: Opposition Official Beaten as Crackdown Grows/Opposition Members Barred from Leaving Country

From the New York Times

Zimbabwe’s crackdown on the nation’s political opposition expanded on Saturday and Sunday to block foreign travel by leading government critics, and one official of the main opposition party was severely beaten while en route to Harare’s airport for a flight to Brussels.

Nelson Chamisa, the spokesman for the largest faction of the party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was stopped and beaten with iron bars by four assailants as he tried to drive to the airport late on Saturday, a party official, William Bango, told news agencies in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. Mr. Chamisa was headed to Brussels for a meeting with European Union officials.

Mr. Chamisa was reported to have suffered a fractured skull and a crushed eye socket. He was among scores of opposition activists whom riot police arrested and beat on March 11 as the activists sought to stage an antigovernment prayer meeting south of Harare.

Those who attacked Mr. Chamisa on Saturday were not identified, but his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change said Zimbabwe’s espionage service, the Central Intelligence Organization, was behind the attack.

Separately, Zimbabwe’s police arrested the leader of a smaller faction of the opposition party, Arthur Mutambara, as he sought to leave Harare to fly to South Africa. Mr. Mutambara was charged with inciting public violence.

Two other antigovernment activists who were seriously injured in the March 11 beatings, Grace Kwinje and Sekai Holland, were stopped as they sought to fly to South Africa to seek medical treatment.

From Reuters

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and others arrested for defying a government ban on rallies will be prevented from leaving the country until they appear in court, a police spokesman said on Monday.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai and dozens of opposition and civic group leaders were arrested last week when they tried to attend a rally. The MDC chief and many others said they were savagely beaten in police custody.

Tsvangirai, who left a hospital in Harare on Friday, and his colleagues face charges of public violence and convening an illegal rally. A court hearing last week was canceled and a new date has not been set.

"The case is still pending and they have to appear in court first," Wayne Bvudzijena, a police spokesman, told Reuters. "I understand the dockets are ready so the case should proceed anytime."

On Saturday two opposition officials were stopped at Harare's airport on their way to seek medical treatment in South Africa. Arthur Mutambara, who leads a smaller MDC faction, was arrested as he attempted to travel to Zimbabwe's neighbor.

Darfur: When Muslims Ignore the Prophet

An op-ed by Adam LeBor, author of "Complicity with Evil: the United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide" from The Times

Question: When do Muslim states deem the lives of fellow Muslims not worth saving? Answer: When they are black Africans.

Islam holds that all Muslims, no matter what their colour or ethnic origin, are equal members of the umma, the community of believers. “All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a nonArab over an Arab, also a white has no superiority over a black, nor a black over a white, except by piety and good action,” said the Prophet Muhammad in his last sermon. The 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) seem to think otherwise.

The UN Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, this week issued its report on the continuing slaughter in Darfur. Echoing the findings of previous UN investigations, it documented how Sudanese government forces and their proxy militia, the Janjawid, are committing murder, mass rape and kidnap: “The situation is characterised by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international law.”

Since the start of the conflict in spring 2003, more than 400,000 people have been killed, or died of disease or malnutrition, while more than two million have been made homeless. The Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit ethnic groups of Darfur, Sunni Muslims, are victims of the first genocide of the 21st century — their menfolk massacred, their women raped, their villages razed, their children thrown into burning houses. Their tormentors abuse them as abid, Arabic for slave, or zurka, meaning “dirty black”. The Prophet’s sermon does not resonate in Darfur.

Sudan demanded that the report be rejected by the UN’s Human Rights Council. You might expect, with all the furore about the abuses of Muslims in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere, that the OIC would welcome the report. You would be wrong. The OIC rejected the report. It demanded that it should not considered by the Human Rights Council. In fact, the OIC says, the report does not even exist.

Babacar Ba, the OIC’s representative to the UN in Geneva, said: “We didn’t recognise the mission to have fulfilled its mandate and we rejected the report.”

Instead, the OIC argued that the report was, in UN parlance, a “nonreport”. Why? Because the investigators did not visit Darfur. Why did they not visit Darfur? Because the Sudanese Government refused to issue them visas. The answer, the OIC and Sudan agree, is to dispatch a new mission, its members to be approved by Sudan and doubtless to agree, as Khartoum claims, that the situation is “improving”.

So continues Darfur’s danse macabre, helpfully choreographed by Sudan’s allies. The Arab and Muslim world’s continuing indulgence of Sudan’s onslaught has been a big factor in weakening the UN’s sporadic efforts to stop the carnage. The Security Council did not even discuss Darfur until April 2004, a full year into the crisis. “Sudan was initially very successful at keeping itself off the Security Council agenda, with the full support of the Arab group,” said one UN official working on Darfur.

For many Muslim governments the weary reflexes of anti-colonialism still triumph over saving lives. Far better to show solidarity with Khartoum than cede an inch to Western concepts of human rights — because that would set a dangerous precedent for the decrepit monarchies and dictatorships that rule much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Does it matter which resolutions are passed or opposed in the labyrinthine UN bureaucracy? It does. During the Bosnian War, Muslim countries exerted sustained pressure at the UN on the Western powers to intervene against the Serbs. Pakistan and Turkey, in particular, were vocal defenders of Bosnia, attempting, unsuccessfully, to toughen up the Security Council resolutions. Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the UN, recalled how she witnessed US prestige draining away over the West’s failure to save Bosnian Muslims. The growing Muslim anger over Bosnia eventually galvanised President Clinton and Nato into action.

Muslim states, especially Pakistan and Algeria, which have sat on the Security Council during this crisis, have consistently watered down the same type of resolutions over Darfur that a decade ago they tried to strengthen for Bosnia. Rather than issue sanctions against Sudan, the members of the Human Rights Council repeatedly condemn Israel. All of this Sudan, correctly, interprets as a licence to carry on slaughtering.

There is much talk of what the West must do to save Darfur. Whatever our obligations, the crisis is also a chance for the Islamic world to save lives. It’s a tragedy for the people of Darfur, for all of us, that the hypocrisy and double-standards of the OIC make this an opportunity wasted.

Darfur: Ban Ki-Moon on Khartoum's Response to UN Force in Darfur: "Not Satisfactory"

The latest from Eric Reeves

Although entirely unsurprising, the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum has again defiantly rejected essential elements of the proposed UN/AU peace support operation to Darfur, this in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received last week. Designed to replace the large and robustly mandated force specified in UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006), the UN/AU “hybrid operation” negotiated in Addis Ababa (November 16, 2006) has always been dogged by ambiguity and by Khartoum’s insistence that a “hybrid operation” was quite different from a “hybrid force”; the regime has repeatedly and adamantly rejected the latter for over half a year.

There were three “phases” of the “hybrid operation” sketched in Addis Ababa “Conclusions” document. Notably, this was not a signed agreement, and several critical issues were left undecided. The evident conviction last November was that Khartoum would eventually accept UN terms of reference for each of these three phases: the “light support package” for the existing AU mission (some equipment and approximately 180 personnel); the “heavy support package” for the AU (the “phase” currently at issue); and ultimately (“phase three”) a large force of some 20,000 troops and civilian police.

But subsequent discussions have never moved past “phase two” (the “heavy support package” to the AU), and last week’s letter from NIF President Omar al-Bashir made clear that international assumptions about Khartoum’s willingness to see meaningful improvements in security for civilians and humanitarians in Darfur are entirely misguided. Although it was clear well before the letter from al-Bashir that Khartoum had no intention of facilitating or even allowing for significant changes in the current security dynamic in Darfur (see below), it has proved expedient for various international actors to profess surprise:

"‘I was stunned by the letter,’ [US Special Envoy for Sudan Andrew] Natsios said.” (Reuters [Washington, DC], March 14, 2007)

But of course this is simply more of an increasingly familiar disingenuousness on Natsios’ part. Only a week earlier, Natsios had confessed in Khartoum that no agreement had been reached on moving forward:

“After meeting President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Natsios said there was still no agreement on allowing non-African peacekeeping troops to assist a cash-strapped and inexperienced African Union mission in Darfur.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], March 8, 2007)

Natsios, we should recall, was posturing last December about a US “Plan B” that would be deployed if a January 1, 2007 deadline for various benchmarks were not met by Khartoum. Now it would seem that Natsios is claiming “Plan B” is still in preparation:

“President George W. Bush's special envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios, meanwhile told several human rights groups in a conference call Wednesday [March 14, 2007] that the administration was preparing its own ‘Plan B’ package of economic sanctions against Sudan, according to a participant in the [conference] call [with Natsios and nongovernmental organizations].” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Washington], March 15, 2007)

And language from the US State Department suggests that whatever “Plan B” is, it is not so much a plan for coercive US action as a vague gesture toward “international levers”:

“Asked whether Natsios would present Bashir with a list of new sanctions or other measures in a classified ‘plan B’ being considered by Washington if Khartoum continues to resist a hybrid force, [State Department spokesman Sean] McCormack said there were a number of ‘diplomatic levers’ available.”

"‘It is a tragedy what is happening in Darfur,’ he said. ‘That is why we think it is so important for the international system to use whatever levers are at its disposal to get the Sudanese government to change its behavior and act to allow that UN/AU force in.’” (Reuters [dateline: Washington, DC], March 5, 2007)

Suddenly “Plan B” isn’t a US plan but an effort to get “the international system to use whatever levers are at its disposal.” There is nothing more helpful from Mr. McCormack, although talk of further US sanctions has been around for many weeks. As most recently reported, such sanctions would oblige Sudan to convert all dollar-denominated contracts, transactions, and business dealings to other currencies (the Euro, perhaps even the Chinese yuan for oil transactions):

“Natsios declined to provide the names of companies that might be affected by new sanctions but international transactions involving US dollars would be blocked. ‘This will shut all that down,’ he added, without being more specific. He also did not name the three Sudanese who would be sanctioned but said they were well-known. US financial sanctions that restrict business in dollars potentially affect the entire global financial system since most banks have dealings in the United States, either through branches or correspondent banks.” (Reuters [dateline: Washington, DC], March 14, 2007)

But if Sudan’s primary international export wealth derives from crude oil, a highly valued and completely fungible international commodity, it’s not clear why this is not more an inconvenience than a potent threat that will have significant long-term effects, particularly given the survivalist calculations on the part of the serial génocidaires who make up the NIF regime and control all elements of the merely notional Sudanese “Government of National Unity.” And if such sanctions are a potent tool, why has the US waited so long to deploy them? We have now entered the fifth year of a counter-insurgency war that early on became genocidal in nature: if the US has such leverage, why wasn’t it used hundreds of thousands of lives ago?

Here we might also reflect on previous sanctions per a March 2005 UN Security Council Resolution, imposed a year and a half ago, without discernible consequences, upon two rebel leaders, one Janjaweed leader, and one mid-level member of the NIF regime. A UN embargo on arms to Darfur has also proved completely meaningless, as has the demand that Khartoum cease aerial military operations in Darfur.

Darfur: Egypt Opposes Sanctions

From Reuters

Egypt on Saturday opposed sanctions on Sudan over Khartoum's refusal to allow thousands of international peacekeepers into its war-ravaged Darfur region.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had sent letters to the U.N. Security Council permanent members, the African Union and the European Union urging them to "deal positively" with a letter sent by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the Darfur issue.

U.N. officials said the letter listed a variety of conditions to approve the world body's plan to bolster the African Union's under-funded 7,000-member force now in Darfur.

The letter prompted Britain to urge the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to impose sanctions on Sudan. The United States said the following day it was planning new sanctions against Khartoum, including restrictions on companies that do business there in U.S. dollars.

"The minister called all parties to continue dialogue to ease the hurdles and warned against the consequences of the so-called 'Plan-B' that include talks about imposing sanctions on Sudan," the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Egypt, which borders Sudan, has blamed the violence in Darfur on rebel groups that had rejected a May 2006 peace deal. The ministry said Aboul Gheit's letter urged the U.N. Security Council to work on reaching a political settlement that would include the non-signatory rebel groups to the peace agreement.

Darfur: ICC Judges Sack Defence Counsel

From the Sudan Tribune

The International Criminal Court (ICC) sacked the Libyan counsel of defence in Darfur case from his duties. The judges said he presented baseless requests and motions. Furthermore they described the filings made to challenge the jurisdiction of the ICC in Darfur as “frivolous and vexatious”.

The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) today issued a strongly worded decision ordering the world court’s registry to relieve Hadi Shalluf from his responsibilities as the counsel for defence in Darfur case. The judges also dismissed Shalluf’s request to be compensated for his legal services in the period from December 2006 to February 2007.

The Libyan born counsel was appointed by the court on August 2006 to represent and protect the general interests of the defence in the Darfur case before the ICC.

The judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC who were assigned the Darfur case, invited the observations of Antonio Cassese the head of UN commission of inquiry on Darfur and by Louise Arbour the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concerning the protection of victims and the preservation of evidence in Darfur.

The judges also asked the defence counsel to specifically address the issues raised by Cassese and Arbor in their observations. However, he ignored the observations and filed a long series of motions to challenge the jurisdiction of the Court and the admissibility of the Darfur case at the ICC that were eventually rejected by the judges.

Shalluf sent a letter to the head of the Division of Victims and Counsel, who handles the issues relating to counsel fees, at the ICC requesting that payments be made to him on services rendered for the periods of 1st to 31st December 2006 and 1st to 31st January.

He was informed on February 13 that no payment would be made to him for that time period on the grounds that he exceeded the scope of his mandate. The defence counsel filed a motion earlier this week challenging this decision saying it is “unlawful, flawed, void and unfair” and asking the judges to order the court’s registry to pay him for the work he performed during the last three months. Shalluf also requested in his filing the intervention of the chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to give his opinion on the matter.

The judges said in their decision that Shalluf’s mandate was strictly to respond to the observations of Cassese and Arbor within ten days of their submission and the defence counsel failed to file a timely response as requested by the court.

The defence counsel was reprimanded by the judges for filing “an inordinate number of baseless requests and motions; that he has completely disregarded the precise and clear scope of his mandate by adopting his own interpretation of the mandate”. Furthermore the judges described the filings made by Shalluf to challenge the admissibility and the jurisdiction of the ICC in Darfur as “frivolous and vexatious” and that the defence counsel “is in no position to demand payment of fees for that time period”.

The decision is not likely to have any impact on the Darfur case proceedings. Shalluf has previously accused the court in an interview published this week of “racial bias” because of his Middle Eastern background. He also criticized the Sudanese government for “not taking the ICC seriously” and offered to fully cooperate with Khartoum to handle the Darfur case. However the head of Sudan’s bar association Fathi Khalil was quoted as saying that Khartoum is not interested in any dealings with the ICC or Shalluf as such.

Darfur: China, Russia Seek to Block UN Report

True to form, China and Russia again protect Sudan. If there was any dobut about whether the UN would be able to get its act together on Darfur, this ought to dispel it entirely - From Reuters

China and Russia joined with Arab and Muslim states on Friday in urging the U.N.'s human rights watchdog to ignore a report from a mission to Darfur that blamed Sudan for continuing war crimes against civilians there.

The two permanent Security Council members argued the mission, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, last month failed to gain access to the vast western region of Sudan and had not fulfilled its mandate.

Despite warnings from Western and some African states that failure to act would undermine the credibility of the newly formed rights Human Rights Council, Muslim and Arab states and their allies backed Sudan's line that the report had no legal basis.

"The so-called mission failed to make an onsite visit. The report cannot be considered objective ... and has no legal basis," China said in a statement to the 47-state Council, which was echoed by Russia.

Darfur: Sudan’s Response 'Not Satisfactory'

From the UN News Center - via POTP

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said he had told Sudan’s President that his reply to UN calls for speedy deployment of a United Nations-African Union (AU) hybrid force for Darfur was “not satisfactory,” while dissatisfaction is growing among Member States and intensive diplomacy continues in a bid to end the conflict in the strife-torn region.

The Secretary-General spoke with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir last Saturday by phone, when Sudan’s leader also invited him to visit the country, Mr. Ban told reporters at UN Headquarters today, adding that he had not yet made a decision on this.

“I told him that while I accept his invitation in principle the details…should be discussed through diplomatic channels. I expressed my regret [about his reply]…that he made a number of reservations on ideas that were jointly proposed by the United Nations and African Union,” Mr. Ban said, adding that he had urged Mr. Bashir to accept the proposals for the hybrid force.

“There is growing frustration among the members of the United Nations, particularly the Security Council,” the Secretary-General said in response to questions. “What is important at this time, even though we are frustrated, the political process has been going on. My Special Representative and the AU Special Representative are going to visit Sudan next week again.”

“My own hope is that as we have been going through this political dialogue with the Sudanese Government and even though the response letter of President Bashir was not a satisfactory one, now I’m in the process of making all diplomatic efforts, including AU leaders.”

Darfur: Nobel Peace Laureate Urges U.N. to Act

From the AP

The United Nations must act to protect the people in Darfur from atrocities that include killings, rape and torture, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams told the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday.

The Sudanese government and the international community have failed to protect the people in the western Sudanese region from war crimes and crimes against humanity, Williams said.

Presenting the report drawn up by a team of experts under her lead, Williams said the panel had found "a pattern of counterinsurgency by the government of the Sudan together with janjaweed militia."

"Killing, rape, torture, arbitrary arrest, repression of political dissent and abuses of political freedoms occur with chilling frequency," Williams said.

In the most explicit of a long series of reports submitted by rights experts to the world body over the past four years, the team called for U.N. Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced by four years of fighting.

The report, made public on Monday, has been subject to fierce debate within the Geneva-based council. Muslim members of the rights body, including Sudan, tried to stop the council from considering the findings.

The document was drawn up outside the country after Sudan refused to grant the team visas.

The Sudanese delegation rejected the report as illegitimate and unfair because the authors did not visit Darfur and failed to be impartial.

"We witness a conspiracy against Sudan for political objectives," Sudanese Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told the council.

"This faulty report should not be discussed in this council," he said, adding that "the situation in Darfur is much better than it has ever been before."

The 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference also rejected the report because the expert panel did not go to Darfur. The OIC accused the team of "selectivity and targeting."

"The people of Sudan are not served by a list of condemnatory recommendations," said Tehmina Janjua of the Pakistan mission to the U.N. in Geneva, on behalf of the OIC.

European countries were pressing the council to accept the report and its recommendations, including the deployment of a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force as demanded by the Security Council.

"Now it's time for the council to act," said Michael Steiner, German ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, speaking on behalf of the European Union.

He said the EU was concerned about rights violations both by the government and by rebel groups.

"We owe an effective follow-up to the people of Darfur," he said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in a statement from Brussels urged the council members to endorse the report and to follow its recommendations.

"The report is timely as it reminds us all of the desperate plight of civilians in Darfur and the need for the international community ... to address this issue," he said.

Warren W. Tichenor, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, also urged the council members to endorse the report.

"The assessment mission's report confirms unequivocally the tragic and ongoing violence in the region," he said in a statement given to The Associated Press.

Britain said the council must join the U.N. effort to stop the "appalling human rights and humanitarian situation in Darfur" to avoid a repetition of the genocide that followed inadequate U.N. measures to avert violence in Rwanda.

"We will be judged by the international community at large on our ability to act to protect the people of Darfur," British ambassador Nicholas Thorne told the council.

Darfur: French Prime Minister Calls for 'Shuttle Diplomacy'

From the AP

he French prime minister said the humanitarian crisis in conflict-wracked Darfur should be at the top of the U.N. agenda and called for shuttle diplomacy to try to reach a political solution.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday the international community must work to win both Arab and African support to resolve the four-year conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. He dismissed the idea of a Security Council resolution against Sudan, saying it would "only accelerate (the process) on paper."

Villepin spoke to reporters after a meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on a range of issues from French peacekeeping troops deployed in Lebanon to the Iranian nuclear standoff and support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Villepin said the humanitarian crisis in Darfur was one of the issues that should "be at the top of the United Nations' agenda."

CAR: More Violence Reported

From IRIN

Several civilians have been killed and homes burnt by the army in ongoing clashes with rebels in northwestern Central African Republic, an international advocacy group has said.

At least 20 houses were burnt by the army on 11 March, between Lia and Voh, about 30km south of Paoua, Refugees International (RI) said on Thursday. Three civilians, including a baby, were killed in a clash between the army and the rebel Armée Populaire pour la restauration de la république et la démocratie (APRD).

The APRD is one of the groups fighting President François Bozize, claiming he overthrew a legitimate government in March 2003, has mismanaged public funds and divided the nation. Led by a renegade soldier, Lt Bedaya N’Djadder, it has been active for more than two years.

"The violence belies assurances given to Refugees International by senior military personnel that house burnings would cease under direct orders from the President and their commander in Bangui, the capital," RI said.

On an extensive visit to the prefectures of Ouham and Ouham-Pendé, RI found burnt villages remained empty after residents fled to safety in rough settlements near their fields.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates there are 150,000 internally displaced people across the CAR. One million people live in the conflict-affected northwestern region.

"Refugees International was able to visit Voh and assess the damage to the village," it said. "While the walls of the mud brick houses were no longer hot to the touch, up to three inches of fine ash remained in the burnt houses, suggesting that the burning occurred recently. Metal cooking pots were randomly strewn among the ashes."

Darfur: Bearing Witness to Genocide

From the San Francisco Chronicle

Rotting corpses, starving babies, burned-out villages. Those aren't the kinds of images kids at San Anselmo's Sir Francis Drake High School usually see when they crowd into the gym for an assembly.

But they got an eyeful one recent morning when Mark Brecke, a resourceful San Francisco photographer who's spent a decade documenting mass murder and ethnic cleansing, served up a sobering tutorial on genocide. He showed slides from the decimated Darfur region of Sudan, where he lived for five weeks with roving rebels of the Sudanese Liberation Army, and from the camps in neighboring Chad, where survivors find refuge from the slaughter and forced starvation that has killed more than 400,000 people since 2003.

"These images are not easy to take, that's for sure,'' said Brecke, a soft-spoken, fair-haired man in his late 30s, showing a picture of a partially decomposed body lying in the dirt. "But they're necessary. Because you are witnessing a mass crime scene, if you want to call it that.''

The full Drake student body was required to attend the assembly, thanks to impassioned lobbying by the school's Save Darfur Club and its founders, juniors Maggie Polachek and Rebecca Kannett. The students sat in silence for nearly an hour as Brecke quietly told a story of horrific human acts, and the nobility of the people who've endured them.

An inveterate traveler who has documented the killing fields and cultures of Cambodia, Kosovo and Rwanda, as well as photographing in East Timor, the West Bank and other deadly zones, he has spoken to more than 100 school and activist groups around the country over the past two years, as well as on Capitol Hill, where some of his images hung in the Senate rotunda. Traveling cross-country by train to make his Darfur presentation to Washington, D.C., policymakers, he showed his potent pictures to fellow passengers. Their emotional responses were captured on video and audio-taped for National Public Radio. They appear in "They Turned Our Desert Into Fire,'' Brecke's new film about the Darfur crisis, excerpts of which he will screen April 7 at Other Cinema (992 Valencia St.) in San Francisco.

[edit]

Brecke slipped into Darfur with the help of a rebel leader named Suleiman Jamous, a highly educated, English-speaking former Sudanese government official who organized humanitarian efforts and provided safe passage for journalists and aid workers. Brecke made contact with him by satellite phone from Chad. He credits Jamous, whom he calls the wisest man he'll probably ever meet, with saving thousands of lives.

"You have to be careful that you're not being used as a propaganda tool,'' Brecke said, but he saw too much destruction to doubt the claims of genocide. "You didn't have to go far to see open grave sites. You saw bombs stuck in the sand that had not detonated, almost like a cartoon caricature, with the fins sticking out of the ground. The evidence is all around you. It doesn't take an expert in crimes against humanity to see what's been happening.''

Darfur: NYC Students Protest China in Sudan

From the Queens Ledger

On Saturday afternoon, a contingent of students and residents from Queens and Brooklyn joined hundreds of fellow citizens and Darfur activists, bused in from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Washington D. C., to dramatically spotlight China's complicity in the four-year-old genocide still raging in Sudan.

They rallied at Dag Hammerskjold Park, across from the United Nations, and then formed a human chain between the Sudanese U. N. Mission on 305 East 47th Street to the Chinese Mission at 350 East 35th Street in Manhattan to symbolize "the widely acknowledged link between China and the Darfur genocide," according to event organizers.

Event sponsors included STAND, an international student anti-genocide coalition, the Genocide Intervention Network, Americans Against Darfur Genocide, and the Sudan Divestment Task Force.

"Because of high oil and economic interests in the region," event organizers argued, "China has allowed the genocide in Darfur to continue, blocking any significant UN action. While these atrocities continue," they continued, "the Sudanese government has not only proceeded unpunished but (is) even supported through funding, predominantly on the part of China."

A main focus of the event was to urge citizens of both New York City and New York State to divest their pension funds from companies (mostly in the oil business) from financially supporting the Khartoum government, widely held responsible for the atrocities in its southern region of the country.

Much like China's soaring economy, Sudan's annual growth rate is about 10 percent, producing 500,000 barrels of oil a day worth about $10 billion annually. Of that amount, about 75 percent is exported to China, much of it via a Beijing-financed, 1,000-mile pipeline from the south to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Darfur: Call the White House

An email from former Sen. Bill Frist on behalf of Save Darfur

Each year I travel to Africa as a medical missionary. I've just returned from my latest trip, a deeply troubling visit to the Sudan.

Due to a series of increasingly violent attacks on foreign aid workers in Darfur over the past six months, international efforts to protect civilians and provide them with food, clean water, shelter, and medical care are in a state of crisis.

Countless men, women, and children are in real danger of falling prey to violence, starvation, or disease as a result of these attacks.

The U.S. must take the lead in working with the international community to end the violence. The lives of millions hang in the balance.

Please join me in calling the White House comment line today to urge President Bush to launch "Plan B," his tough, three-tiered plan to push Sudan to end the genocide, before more lives are lost in Darfur.

It will only take two minutes of your time and could make a world of difference for millions of people in need. Just follow the steps below:

Dial 1-800-671-7887 (toll-free)

Once you've been transferred to the comment line leave your comment using the talking points below:

I'm calling to urge President Bush to implement "Plan B" to help bring an end to the genocide in Darfur. Specifically, I am asking him to:

Enforce tough sanctions against Sudan;

Work with the UN to authorize and enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to protect civilians from Sudanese bombers; and

Press the UN for faster deployment of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians in Darfur.

Click here to report your call back to the Save Darfur Coalition (this step is crucial - please don't skip it.)

The U.S. and the international community are all that stand between millions of civilians in Darfur and the Sudanese regime's policy of genocide. Hundreds of thousands have already been killed, and time is running out for millions more.

Without tough "Plan B" measures to accompany diplomatic efforts, the international community's efforts to end the violence in Darfur are doomed to fail.

Please follow the steps above to join me in calling the White House comment line to ask President Bush to launch "Plan B" without further delay, then click here to report your call back to the Save Darfur Coalition.

I hope you will help me spread this message of urgent action by forwarding my email to your friends, family and co-workers and asking them to join you in taking two minutes to call the White House.

Thank you for your ongoing advocacy on behalf of the people of Darfur.

Sincerely,

Senator Bill Frist, M.D.

Zimbabwe: Mugabe Tells the West to 'Go Hang'/Tsvangirai Vows to Fight On/SADC Meeting Planned

From Retuers

President Robert Mugabe on Thursday told Western countries to "go hang" after a barrage of international criticism over charges that an opposition leader was assaulted in police custody.

Opposition officials say police tortured Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai and several other opposition and civic group leaders Sunday after they tried to attend a prayer vigil in a Harare township.

But the government has suggested that Tsvangirai and his group resisted arrest and on Thursday accused opposition supporters of waging a militia-style campaign of violence to topple Mugabe.

"It's the West as usual … when they criticize the government trying to prevent violence and punish the perpetrators of that violence, we take the position that they can go hang," Mugabe said.

The United States dismissed Mugabe's comments as an attempt to paint himself as a victim, and Britain said it was trying to press the United Nations and European Union for a tough response to Harare's crackdown on the opposition.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told reporters in London that Britain wanted direct action against those responsible for the detentions and beatings of Tsvangirai and others.

The 83-year-old Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has frequently called the MDC a puppet party sponsored by the West.

"Here are groups of persons who went out of their way to effect a campaign of violence and we hear no criticism at all of those actions of violence, none at all," Mugabe said.

From Reuters

Zimbabwe's main opposition leader vowed on Friday to keep fighting to end President Robert Mugabe's 27-year rule, saying he would not be intimidated by government threats or police brutality.

"One thing is certain ... that freedom is not cheap," Morgan Tsvangirai told Reuters in an interview at his home shortly after he was released from hospital, where he was treated for injuries he said resulted from a beating in police custody.

"It's only when people lose freedom that they realise how precious the freedom is ... the struggle continues," the 55-year-old MDC leader said as he sat on a couch, his wrist bandaged and a blue beret covering a head wound.

Tsvangirai was among scores of anti-Mugabe activists arrested in an aborted protest on Sunday in the capital Harare. He and other detainees said they were savagely beaten by police after their arrests.

Images of a badly bruised and limping Tsvangirai entering hospital earlier this week fuelled international outrage and threats by the United States and other nations to tighten sanctions against Mugabe and other senior Zimbabwean officials.

Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist who has challenged Mugabe in several elections, said he was feeling better but had been told to relax by doctors. He did not mention reports that he had suffered a fractured skull.

His comments echoed the defiant position he took in an article published in Britain's Independent newspaper on Friday, in which he said "democratic change" was in sight in Zimbabwe and his spirit would not be broken by violence.

"They (police) brutalised my flesh. But they will never break my spirit. I will soldier on until Zimbabwe is free," he wrote, saying he suffered an "orgy of heavy beatings" in custody.

From Reuters

Members of the southern African regional bloc SADC will meet in Tanzania near the end of this month to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, Tanzania's foreign minister said on Friday.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete met Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe in Harare on Thursday amid international outrage over images of beaten opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai going to court after his arrest.

Tanzania is one of a troika of SADC states charged with trying to solve Zimbabwe's political and economic woes.

"Our president believes that as the chairman of the SADC peace and security organs, and in collaboration with other SADC leaders, they can solve Zimbabwe's problems diplomatically," Tanzanian foreign minister Bernard Membe said of Kikwete.

Members of bloc's peace and security organisation would meet on March 26-27 in Dar es Salaam, he added.

Uganda: LRA Ready to Restart Talks

From Reuters

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said on Friday they would return to peace talks in south Sudan if the government there increased security to keep the Ugandan army from attacking them.

The rebels quit talks with Uganda in the south Sudanese capital, Juba, in January, denting hopes for an end to two decades of bloodshed in northern Uganda.

"There is now a willingness to go back to Juba," LRA spokesman Obonyo Olweny told Reuters by telephone. "We are just waiting for a response from southern Sudan."

The LRA said they pulled out fearing for their security after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir threatened them.

The change of heart follows a trip on Sunday by the U.N. envoy for the conflict, former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, to talk with fugitive rebel leader, Joseph Kony.

This week, Uganda said it had wooed LRA delegates back on promises of adding mediators from African countries besides south Sudan.

The insurgency led by guerrillas notorious for mutilating victims and kidnapping children has killed thousands of Ugandan civilians and displaced nearly 2 million people.

Olweny said the promise to expand the mediators to include five other countries -- Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- satisfied the LRA.

But the LRA demanded better security for their negotiators in Juba and their fighters scattered in south Sudan and on the Sudan/Congo border.

"If those concerns are addressed, we can go back," he said.

Genocide: U.S.-Turkish Relations and the Challenges Ahead

Blatantly ridiculous testimony from Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs
Testimony Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Europe

Against this complex background of shared interests, common values, and political turbulence, Turkey now faces the possibility of a U.S. Congressional resolution defining as genocide the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The Administration has never denied - nor does it dispute or minimize - the historical facts of these mass murders and ethnic cleansing. Each year, the President issues a solemn statement on April 24, Armenian Remembrance Day, recognizing these atrocities and the suffering inflicted on Armenians. The Administration's goal is to stimulate a candid exploration within Turkish society of these horrific events in an effort to help Turkey reconcile with its painful past and with Armenia. This is not easy. It was not easy for the United States to address its own historical dark spots, including slavery and the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during WWII. We will have to be persistent and thoughtful.

But after a long silence, Turkey is making progress. The terrible murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink by an ultra-nationalist accelerated an intellectual opening in Turkish society, with more than 100,000 Turkish citizens of all political, confessional, and ethnic backgrounds demonstrating at Dink's funeral in support of tolerance and a candid exploration of Turkey's past. Their shouts of "We are all Hrant Dink; we are all Armenian" resonate in the ears of millions of people in Turkey and the world over who believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and human dignity for all of Turkey's citizens.

Political leaders across the political spectrum in Turkey condemned the killing. President Sezer said the murder was "ugly and shameful." Turkish Chief of General Staff General Buyukanit called the killing a "heinous act" and said the "shots fired on Hrant Dink were . . . . . fired on Turkey." We are seeing growing calls, including from Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Gul, for changes to Article 301 of the Constitution, which, in criminalizing "insulting Turkishness," stifles Turkey's ability to discuss openly the events of 1915. We welcome Turkish leaders' and opinion makers' calls to amend or repeal Article 301.

Against this backdrop, we believe that H.Res. 106 would undercut those voices emerging in Turkey who call for a truthful exploration of these events in pursuit of Turkey's reconciliation with its own past and with Armenia. We hear from members of the 60,000-70,000 strong Armenian-Turkish community that any such resolution would raise popular emotions so dramatically as to threaten their personal security.

This Administration, like the previous Administration before it, opposes any resolution that attempts to define how free-thinking people should term the horrific tragedy of 1915. We believe this question, which is of such enormous human significance, should be resolved not by politicians, but through heartfelt introspection by historians, philosophers, and common people. Our goal is an opening of the Turkish mind and the Turkish heart. Our fear is that passage of any such resolution would close minds and harden hearts.

Secretary Rice has an ambitious agenda with Turkey over the next two years, and we hope to work with Congress to achieve success in these goals. We look forward to close consultation with the Subcommittee, Committee and other Members interested in our agenda with Turkey.

Genocide: Resolution Introduced in Senate

From the Turkish Daily News

U.S. congressional backers of Armenians launched a fresh attack on Turkey on Wednesday, introducing a fresh Armenian genocide resolution in the Senate at a time when Ankara is already struggling to stop a similar measure pending in the House ofRepresentatives.

Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the number two Democrat in the Senate, and Sen. John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, sponsored and formally introduced the legislation, the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) announced in a written statement.

The Senate measure mirrors the House resolution, calling for official recognition of World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide, it said.Twenty-one senators in the 100-seat Senate cosponsored the resolution, but the names of Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, who in the past had backed a number of pro-Armenian measures, were absent on a list of supporters.

Among prominent senators backing the genocide resolution were John Kerry of Massachusetts, Democratic candidate in the 2004 presidential elections, Joe Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and Edward Kennedy, another Massachusetts Democrat.

"The Armenian genocide was the 20th century's first genocide, a crime against humanity that included murder, deportation, torture, and slave labor," Durbin said, according to the AAA statement. "It is long past time that the United States speak with clarity on this reality."

He added that "recognizing the Armenian genocide takes on added importance in the face of the genocide occurring now in the Darfur region of Sudan."

In a related development that could come as a relief for Turkey, Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who in the past has backed pro-Armenian legislations, has not made her final decision on what to do on the genocide measure pending in the House, The Associated Press reported.

It quoted a Democratic congressional aide as saying that Pelosi, who controls the House agenda, has no plan to bring the proposal before the House soon. The aide spoke anonymously because final plans have not been approved.

President George W. Bush's administration opposes any congressional approval of Armenian genocide claims in an effort to avoid major deterioration of ties withcritical NATO ally Turkey.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in recent identical letters sent to Pelosi and other House leaders, urged the House to drop the resolution.

The measure's passage "could harm American troops in the field, constrain our ability to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and significantly damage our efforts to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey at a key turning point in their relations," the two secretaries said, according to the AP.

Passage of the resolution would harm "U.S. efforts to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia and to advance recognition by Turkey of the tragic events that occurred to ethnic Armenians under the Ottoman Empire," Rice and Gates said.Egemen Bağış, a leading member of a visiting Turkish parliamentary team, said after talks with more than 15 U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday that he was moreoptimistic than before about the chances to stop the House resolution.

He said Representatives Dennis Moore, a Kansas Democrat, and Phil English, a Pennsylvania Republican, had withdrawn their co-sponsorship signatures from theHouse measure after being persuaded in talks with the Turkish side. But still the genocide resolution has nearly 180 cosponsors in the 435-member House.

Both resolutions are non-binding. But even if one of them passes, it will mean a psychological victory for the Armenians, who are then believed to be willing touse that approved measure as a precedent for future demands, potentially including compensation and territorial claims.

Analysts and Turkish diplomats say that the House resolution likely would be more difficult to stop. If Pelosi brings the House measure to a floor vote, it is almost certain that a vast majority of representatives would vote for it, the analysts agree.

However, there are ways to stop legislation in the Senate even after it reaches a floor vote. Most importantly, in the Senate there is a mechanism called filibuster. It is the use of obstructive tactics by a senator to prevent the adoption of a generally favoredmeasure. Such tactics include an exceptionally long speech, as one lasting for a day or days, or a series of such speeches to accomplish this purpose.

Although filibusters are rare, there are successful examples in the U.S. Senate's history, including one to stop another Armenian genocide measure almost two decades ago. Supporting Turkey's case, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd in 1990 reverted to filibuster, which eventually ended up with that resolution's rejection.