Darfur: UNMIS Mandate Extended, Resolution Watered Down

From Reuters

The U.N. Security Council on Monday extended the U.N. mission in southern Sudan for six months, lamented the lack of a chief U.N. envoy and called for an end to atrocities in the Darfur region.

But the United States, which drafted the resolution, was forced to water down the text on Darfur and delete calls for a large U.N. force in the western Sudanese region.

Instead council members insisted the resolution focus mainly on the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Sudan, where troops are helping to enforce a 2005 peace pact after decades of an intermittent civil war between the Arab-dominated north and the Christian and animist south.

"What is important was not in any way to send a signal that we were undermining our continued support for an agreement, which was crucial after all to ending a 35-year civil war," said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, the current council president.

Still, the text expresses "grave concern" over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur, condemns attacks on civilians and calls on all parties to "put an end to the violence and atrocities in Darfur" where at least 200,000 people have died and 2.3 million are homeless.

The resolution also asks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint "urgently" a new special representative for the U.N. Mission in Sudan, known as UNMIS, which has been without a chief of mission since Khartoum expelled Dutchman Jan Pronk last October.

It renews the mandate of UNMIS until Oct. 31, although the United States had wanted only a three-month extension, mainly to keep pressure on Sudan to approve a large "hybrid" United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Darfur: Sudan Ready for Talks With Rebels, Bombs Them

This sums up the Khartoum regime in the nutshell: they are willing to negotiate with the rebels once they unify, but every time the rebels try to get together to do that, the government bombs them- From Reuters

Sudan is ready to negotiate with Darfur rebels once they unite their leadership but should not be expected to sit idly by if government forces in the region are attacked, the junior foreign minister said on Monday.

Rebels and the African Union have accused Sudanese forces of bombing territories in northern Darfur in April while leaders of several rebel factions were preparing for unity talks.

Al-Samani Al-Wasyla blamed the fragmentations and divisions among the many rebels in Darfur, along with "negative messages" sent by western powers, notably the United States, for hindering the prospects of peace negotiations.

"Sudan has not closed the door in the face of any party that could convince the rebel groups (to join peace negotiations) ... because these groups are Sudanese. Peace cannot be achieved without them," he told Reuters in an interview.

"(But) there are countries ... like the United States that have been sending negative messages, thinking that pressure and threats of sanctions will make the Sudanese government accept anything," he said.

The prospect that Sudan will yield to western demands and allow a large United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur prompted some rebel groups to delay joining peace talks, hoping for more government compromises, Wasyla added.

[edit]

And the leader of one rebel faction said his forces brought down a government helicopter that attacked a site in northern Darfur ahead of similar unity talks early on Sunday.

The armed forces denied the attacks but said it had lost contact with a helicopter that was sent on a reconnaissance mission on Sunday after its pilot reported a technical failure.

Wasyla said he could not confirm or deny those raids, but added: "The government respects all ceasefire deals ... But is the government required to take attacks from groups that have not signed any agreement and not respond?"

The rebels say the attacks in April were unprovoked.

Sudan has so far rejected the deployment of a 20,000 U.N. force in Darfur but said it would accept as many African Union peacekeepers as required to stop the violence and called on the world body to fund these troops.

"Transforming the (African) force into a United Nations one rather has become the (west's) goal, rather than reaching a solution," Wasyla said, adding that Sudan will not bow to pressure to accept such a force.

"There are limits that could not be exceeded," he said.

Darfur: Revitalising the Peace Process

A new report from the International Crisis Group [PDF here]

Almost a year after Sudan’s government and one of three rebel factions signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), the humanitarian and security situation has deteriorated in the troubled western region of Sudan. Despite a recent lull, the post-DPA period has seen increased combat, including further government reliance on aerial bombardment and its allied Janjaweed militia. Civilian displacement continues while humanitarian space shrinks. If there is to be peace, the international community will need to coordinate better to surmount significant obstacles including Khartoum’s pursuit of military victory and growing rebel divisions. Over the last year, the primary focus has been on overcoming resistance of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to deployment of UN peacekeepers (or an AU/UN hybrid) so that civilians can be better protected; that remains essential but elusive, even after the NCP’s 16 April acceptance of the UN heavy support package for the AU force, as does an effective ceasefire. Equally important, however, and the focus of this report, is revitalising the moribund peace process.

The DPA has failed because it did not adequately deal with key issues, too few of the insurgents signed it, and there has been little buy-in from Darfur society, which was not sufficiently represented in the negotiations. A lasting solution to the conflict can only come through a revised political agreement but there is no consensus on the way forward. In November 2006, after months of inaction, the AU and UN announced joint efforts to renew political talks between the government and the rebel factions that did not sign the DPA but there has been little progress, while concurrent initiatives by Eritrea, Libya, Egypt and others have created confusion.

Darfur is the epicentre of three overlapping circles of conflict. First and foremost, there is the four-year-old war between the Darfur rebel movements and the government, which is part of the breakdown between Sudan’s centre – the NCP in Khartoum, which controls wealth and political power – and the marginalised peripheries. Secondly, the Darfur conflict has triggered a proxy war that Chad and Sudan are fighting by hosting and supporting the other’s rebel groups. Finally, there are localised conflicts, primarily centred on land tensions between sedentary and nomadic tribes. The regime has manipulated these to win Arab support for its war against the mostly non-Arab rebels. International interests, not least the priority the U.S. has placed on regime assistance in its “war on terrorism” and China’s investment in Sudan’s oil sector, have added to the difficulty in resolving the conflict.

What happens in Darfur may well be decisive for Sudan as a whole, where calculations about its political future are affecting the preparations of all parties for the vital 2009 elections scheduled by the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The NCP insists, as it pursues its familiar divide-and-rule tactics, that the DPA remain the basis of any new talks and seems unwilling to consider more than a few small changes. The rebels demand the agreement be reopened, with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) calling for a radical restructuring of national governance as well. The major northern political opposition parties, which want a new national consensus on the country’s direction, are trying to use the Darfur issue to isolate and pressure the NCP. The losers in the cacophony are Darfur’s suffering civilians.

The haphazard, NCP-directed, Khartoum-centric effort to implement a fundamentally flawed DPA – most recently the formal launch of the new governing body for the region despite a lack of popular support – creates opportunities for confusion and conflict. The new peace talks that are necessary would be best served by freezing further efforts to apply the DPA’s political and wealth-sharing provisions. Likewise, the DPA’s Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation, a potentially important conflict-resolution mechanism, should not be discredited by attempting it now, as Khartoum urges, before the main flaws of the agreement are fixed.

The mediation team needs to engage in a carefully prepared process. Artificial deadlines weakened the DPA, and there must be realistic expectations this time about how long it will take. The mediators must take control of the process and design a framework for renewed talks that responds to the conflict’s complex nature. Peace can be built on the constitutional framework established by the CPA, signed in 2005, but some CPA provisions – particularly on power sharing – need adjusting. The Darfur conflict increasingly undermines CPA implementation and the fragile relationship between the NCP and its minority partner, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Collapse of the CPA would lead the country to a new civil war. Regionally, there is need to integrate Eritrea’s parallel initiative, while bringing Chad into the process to limit its capacity as a spoiler and encourage political resolution of its own internal conflict. The conference in Libya which ended on 29 April appears to have been a positive step towards a single, common approach.

Darfur: War Without End

From the Independent - via POTP

If Mohammed Izadein had met Elsadiq Elzein Rokero last year, he would have tried to kill him. Today, he calls him "brother".

Sitting on a straw mat in a simple mud hut in the village of Sabun, deep in the heart of the Jebel Marra, a fertile mountainous region in the centre of Darfur, Mr Izadein recounts how the two men - one Arab, one Fur - have become unlikely allies against the Sudanese government.

Mr Rokero, a Fur, is a general in the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). Mr Izadein, an Arab from the Talba tribe in the Kass region of south Darfur, was a janjaweed fighter, attacking villages in SLA territory. "Now, this man is my brother," Mr Izadein says, reaching out an arm towards Mr Rokero.

It is an alliance that symbolises the changes taking place in Darfur's four-year- long conflict - a war that has claimed the lives of at least 200,000 people and forced nearly three million from their homes. What began as a rebellion by three non-Arab tribes against perceived marginalisation by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government has escalated into a complex multi-layered conflict.

Mr Izadein signed a peace agreement with the SLA in Jebel Marra at the end of last year. He claims he now leads a group of 3,000 former janjaweed fighters from 12 different Arab tribes who have switched sides and taken up arms against the government they once served.

There are Arabs fighting alongside the rebels and Africans siding with the government. Arab tribes are fighting other Arab tribes - some are even fighting themselves. Desertification has increased tensions, between everybody, as tribes fight to gain control over precious water points.

If it was ever as simple to describe the conflict as a "genocide" of black Africans by an Arab government - and few analysts in Sudan believe it was - it certainly is not now.

Sudan's government is arming any group that is prepared to attack anyone connected with the rebels, be they African or Arab. In some cases they have even armed both sides of the same mini-conflict. It is less about ethnic cleansing and more about power. Khartoum, argue some analysts, may not even want the war to end. "This government has always had a crisis," said Dr Madawi Ibrahim, a Darfurian expert with close ties to the rebel movement. "You keep people busy with a crisis."

President Omar al-Bashir's regime has more than one eye on the general elections due to be held in Sudan in 2009. The government hopes an election victory would give the dictatorship a seal of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. It would also ensure that Sudan's booming oil revenues remain in the hands of the ruling elite.

The divide-and-rule policy in Darfur has intensified following the signing of last year's peace agreement. The factions of the SLA which backed the peace deal have been rewarded with weapons and power.

"It is not only divide and rule - it is divide and destroy," said Hamid Ali Nur, a Darfur expert. "The government is continuing to create this conflict by giving money and arms to different groups."

Keeping those weapons under government control is becoming more difficult. One humanitarian official in Darfur said: "The government has created something they cannot control. They have been handing out weapons all over the place." Mr Izadein happily shows off his three rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs) given to him by government officials. He is now preparing to use them against government troops.

"We have been deceived by the government," he said. "We have been lied to. Now we will fight with our SLA brothers." For more than three years, Mr Izadein's tribe fought alongside the Sudanese government.

"I feel very sorry for what happened," he said. "When SLA attacked El Fasher in 2003 (the attack that started the rebellion) the government came to us and told us the SLA is targeting us and we have to protect ourselves and our animals." Two government officials, one of whom Western diplomatic officials confirmed works for Sudanese military intelligence, met with the leaders of eight tribes in a village called Gardud in Jebel Marra. Mr Izadein's tribe was given 300 Kalashnikovs and told to attack villages where SLA fighters supposedly lived.

"We were working together, the janjaweed and the government. First the fighters on horseback went into the village. If we found any SLA then the government would come in with their big weapons. If not, we were allowed to take what we want - we could burn it if we wanted."

On one occasion, Mr Izadein and his men prepared to attack the village of Leiba. After two days of continuous bombing by Sudanese planes, the janjaweed entered the village. "It was all empty," he said. "So we burned it down." The turning point, Mr Izadein said, came after one of the tribal leaders went to Khartoum to ask the government for compensation for their dead. "We had many deaths but the government refused to help. That's when we began to realise we had been deceived."

Darfur: US Says Sudan Looking for Way Out

From Sudan Tribune

“Sudan is in a corner and they are looking for the way out”. This is how this State Department official started off his conversation with me on the Darfur crisis. The official who spoke to Sudan Tribune on condition of anonymity said that given the pressure from the international community including China, Sudan’s closest ally, president al-Bashir will ultimately have no option but to accept UN peacekeepers in Darfur. The official likened Bashir’s rejection of the UN force to his position during the North-South peace talk in 2003 when he rejected a draft framework presented by mediators saying they can “soak it in water and drink it”. The Sudanese president was later forced to accept a stricter version of the proposal under pressure.

The official strongly rejected the notion that the Bush administration is accommodating Khartoum and described their position as the least “conceding” compared to other countries on the Darfur crisis. He also criticized the “unrealistic” suggestions by some US lawmakers and think-tank groups on how to force Sudan to accept UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

The official also denied that the US is planning to arm the Southern Sudan army as part of the proposed ‘Plan B’ to sanction Khartoum. He also signaled a growing impatience with the splintering of rebel groups saying it is about time they unite at least politically so that negotiations can resume.

Sudan has insisted that any forces in Darfur under the terms of the Addis Ababa communiqué will be under African Union command. Andrew Natsios, President Bush’s Special Envoy to Sudan, told the senate committee on foreign relations that the US insisted that the Addis Ababa communiqué clearly states that the AU-UN hybrid force will be under UN command and control. However at a press conference in Khartoum the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte appeared to have hinted to a change in the US position on this issue. Negroponte said the Darfur peacekeeping force should have a chain of command that “conforms to U.N. standards and practices” as opposed to insisting on the UN command.

The State department official told Sudan Tribune that no change of position was suggested by Negroponte and it was merely a “matter of wording”. He went on to explain by saying that the hybrid force has a military component and a political one. The latter will be run by a representative reporting to both the AU & the UN. However the military component of the force will be led by one commander reporting to New York. He added that it was the AU who said that they do not have the command structure that will enable them to lead a 20,000 strong peacekeepers force.

During the first meeting of Natsios with Bush following his appointment as Sudan’s special envoy, the US president spoke of a “U.N. force of peacekeepers to protect the innocent people” as outlined in resolution 1706 adopted by the UN Security Council on August 2006. However on their second meeting after Natsios’s trip to Khartoum, Bush called for an “effective peacekeeping force” dropping its characterization as a UN force. This eventually led to the plan proposed by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan known as the AU-UN hybrid force and Sudan has agreed to it in the Addis Ababa meeting attended by the UN, AU, Arab League and the major powers including the US. Ever since that agreement, Sudan has boasted that it was able to overcome resolution 1706 in a major defeat to the “colonial powers of the West”.

However the US does not see it this way. “Sudan hates resolution 1706” the official said. According to him the main difference between resolution 1706 and the Addis Ababa agreement is that it emphasizes the African component of the force to make it more appealing to Khartoum. In other words it is a different packaging for the same plan. But some have said that the tripartite commission created by the Addis Ababa agreement gives Khartoum a veto power on the composition and the size of the force. The official firmly rejected this view saying that the agreement has provided for the creation of an effective peacekeeping force with a robust mandate. According to him this is the minimum acceptable to the US. When asked about Sudan’s rejection of non-African troops in Darfur he said that the US strongly urges contributions from African nations but he stressed that if it falls short from what is needed then they will have to look outside the continent. He added that Sudan has agreed to this condition in Addis Ababa.

John Bolton, the former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was quoted as saying that it may be time to contemplate a regime change in Sudan. By that he meant getting rid of the National Congress Party (NCP) component of the government who are practically the only ones in Sudan to object to international peacekeepers in Darfur. Long before that the Sudanese government has consistently accused Washington of trying to topple their regime.

The official wondered “How are we going to do that?” describing the US policy as supportive of a democratic transition in Sudan per the Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA) of 2005. He noted that it was the US who told the Darfur rebels to stop trying to remove the Sudanese regime. He then raised the question “If there was to be a coup in Khartoum who would it be carried by? It will not be the SPLA, the “Mu’arada” (Northern Opposition Parties) or the Darfur rebels. It will probably be a hardliner”. “Our agenda on Sudan is purely humanitarian” he added.

I asked the official on the Darfur Peace agreement (DPA) given the fact it is currently hardly worth the ink it was written on. The Sudanese government insists that no changes will be made to the DPA, contrary to the wishes of the rebel groups. The US official told Sudan Tribune that the DPA is a good agreement and that so much effort was made in Abuja to accommodate the demands of the rebel groups. The official, who was present at the Abuja talks, said that Abdel Wahid Nur leader of Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) has accepted the terms of the DPA but changed his mind the very last minute.

The official disclosed that Khalil Ibrahim, head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), was bringing up issues at the Abuja talks that were irrelevant to the Darfur crisis. He declined to confirm if this is why the US administration is planning to sanction him per a recent Washington Post article. However he mentioned that Ibrahim’s agenda is that of Hassan Turabi, the head of the Popular Congress Party and an ex-ally of President Bashir. He elaborated by saying that it is clear to the US administration that Ibrahim is focused on Khartoum and not on the crisis of his people in Darfur.

In any case the official made it clear that the DPA should not be changed but rather “enhanced” to incorporate the rebel demands, particularly on the issue of compensation, but that starting again from scratch on a new agreement is “not acceptable”.

“The issue of Darfur is not black or white as some people in the US think it is; it is not African tribes against Arab tribes” the official said, criticizing the misunderstandings regarding the Darfur conflict in the US. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, along with other US lawmakers called for military action against Sudan. The State Department official blasted these calls by saying “Do they expect us to invade a Muslim country?. He said that no country will be willing to send peacekeepers to Darfur without the consent of Khartoum even though resolution 1706 does not require Sudan’s approval of such a force. He underlined the importance of working with the Sudanese government to get the force on the ground.

I was curious as to whether there are some improvements in the US-Sudanese relationship recently given that the Sudanese president allowed 40 containers containing material for the new US embassy in Khartoum to enter without the regular custom duties. Al-Bashir also told NBC that the intelligence cooperation with the US will continue. I asked the official why Khartoum will cooperate with Washington on counter-terrorism given the strong rhetoric exchanged between the two capitals.

“The US-Sudanese relationship is in its worst phases since the bombing of the Shifaa [pharmaceutical] factory in 1998” the official said. However the cooperation with Sudan on counter-terrorism will continue. Notwithstanding this, the US has not rewarded Sudan by removing it from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

He added that the Washington told Khartoum it is in their interest to allow these containers to enter the country or else “it will take another 10 years to build the new embassy” and will continue the inconvenience for the residents of the area surrounding the current location of the US embassy in Khartoum.

I questioned the official as to why the US is avoiding sanctioning senior Sudanese officials either unilaterally or through the UN Security Council. A year ago the US objected to a list of senior Sudanese officials to sanction submitted by the UK. The US so far has not sanctioned any member of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) or even the Sudanese president who is blocking the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

“We don’t run down the street to Treasury and ask them to sanction individuals” he said. Unlike Europe, the US has to meet a threshold before they can sanction an individual. Any error in these procedures may create potential lawsuits from financial institutions.

Whether he expects that the US will sanction other Sudanese officials he smiled and said “Wait and see”.

Asked about reports that the US intends to arm the Southern Sudan army as part of the proposed Plan ‘B’ he said there was a misunderstanding in this regard. Upgrading the capabilities of the Southern Sudan army was part of the North-South peace agreement signed in 2005, he said. The Sudanese government has refused to fund the Southern army from the federal budget so a compromise was reached that will allow the South to receive military assistance from abroad, and the US is working in that context.

Darfur: ICC Inches Closer Towards Issuing Arrest Warrants

From the Sudan Tribune

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, sent a letter last week to the Sudanese government inquiring about the prospects of voluntarily handing two suspects in the Darfur war crimes. Media Reports from Khartoum indicated that Ocampo asked the government for a response by today.

The Chief Prosecutor of the ICC had announced late February that he filed charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Ahmed Mohamed Harun the Sudanese state minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kosheib.

In the letter Ocampo said that he was aware of statements made by Harun in which he said he was prepared to surrender himself to the ICC should his government asks him to. Accordingly Ocampo asked if Khartoum will allow the suspects to report to the ICC judges under a summons to appear or else face an arrest warrant.

The Sudanese justice Minster Mohamed Ali Al-Mardi confirmed the receipt of the letter through the Sudanese embassy in the Netherlands. Al-Mardi reiterated Sudan’s position of refusing to extradite any suspects to be tried before the ICC. It was not clear whether Khartoum responded to Ocampo’s letter affirming its position or simply ignored it as some reports have indicated.

The letter sent by the ICC’s chief prosecutor could signal his intention to amend the application he filed before the judges of Pre-Trial Chamber I looking into the Darfur case. Ocampo has originally requested that the judges issue a summons to appear against the two suspects instead of an arrest warrant. The prosecutor however, has to demonstrate to the judges that a summons to appear will ensure the suspects appearance before the court. It is expected that the judges will issue a decision on the matter very soon.

If Sudan fails to comply with a summons to appear order issued by the ICC judges on a specified date an arrest warrant is issued for the named suspects. The arrest warrant will then be transmitted to the states that are parties to the Rome Statue and to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to execute. It is also expected that the UN Security Council would address Sudan’s failure to cooperate with the ICC as spelled out in resolution 1593 referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC.

Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statue, but the UN Security Council triggered the provisions under the Statue that enables it to refer situations in non-State parties to the world court if it deems that it is a threat to international peace and security.

Darfur: Arab League Offended by US. House Resolution

From Reuters

The Arab League said on Sunday is was astonished and offended by a U.S. House of Representatives resolution calling on the league to recognise the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan as genocide.

The House resolution, passed on April 25, also accuses the 22-member Arab League of obstructing the deployment of U.N. forces in Darfur or seeking to reduce the mandate of the forces.

“The secretariat of the Arab League expresses its extreme astonishment at the resolution ... at a time when no international or regional organisation has used this designation (genocide),” a league statement said.

“The league also expresses its indignation at the resolution saying the Arab League has obstructed the deployment of U.N. forces in Darfur. This shows that incorrect information has been submitted to the U.S. Congress on which to base resolutions which are far from reality,” it added.

The Arab League statement defended the organisation’s diplomatic record on the Darfur conflict.

Darfur: Britain Gives Sudan Days to Meet Demands

From the Guardian

Sudan has "days not weeks" to curb military operations in Darfur and accept an international peacekeeping force or face tougher sanctions, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, has warned.

On a day of protests around the world to mark the fourth anniversary of the conflict and to call for UN intervention, Mrs Beckett sought to inject a sense of urgency into the diplomatic effort that has so far failed to contain the crisis.

At least 200,000 people have been killed in the region and 2.5 million people displaced since 2003.

A declaration last month by Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, saying he would no longer stand by an earlier agreement to accept a 22,000-strong UN force, triggered the move by the US and the UK to impose tougher sanctions on Khartoum. President Bashir has since relented, allowing 3,000 UN peacekeepers with six attack helicopters to reinforce 7,000 African Union troops already acting as observers.

But Mrs Beckett made clear the Sudanese leader would have to do more to fend off new punitive measures. She said the work on sanctions would "give a little breathing space to see if there would be progress", but thought there was "a general feeling this must not be allowed to be a recipe for more deliberate delay". She added: "If we don't see progress in days rather than weeks, we will have to move ahead with a fresh sanctions resolution."

Scepticism has been reinforced by Sudan's continuing air raids, including an attack on a rebel meeting yesterday in north Darfur. Tony Blair had pushed for a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced if necessary by air strikes on Sudanese airfields, but met opposition in the security council. Now Britain is pushing for more observers to monitor Sudanese flights. UK officials believe that further evidence of violations will either force Sudan to end its bombing, or add weight to the prime minister's call for a no-fly zone.

To hold off further sanctions, British officials say, Khartoum would have to agree to a UN-AU hybrid force, and take steps to allow in the UN deployment.

But even with Khartoum's cooperation the "heavy support package" would not be in place until the year-end, and the hybrid force not deployed until next year.

Darfur: Sudan Ready for New Talks

From the BBC

Sudan's government says it will meet Darfur rebels for talks being organised by the South Sudanese authorities.

Foreign Minister Lam Akol told the BBC he hoped the rebels would attend the meeting, which is due to be held in the South Sudan capital, Juba, next month.

One Darfur rebel leader said various leaders were meeting in North Darfur early on Sunday when their talks were interrupted by a government air raid.

At least 200,000 people have died since the conflict began, the UN estimates.

Past attempts at bringing the rebel groups and the Sudan government to the discussion have failed, partly due to divisions among the rebel groups.

Sudan Liberation Movement chairman Ahmed Abdul Shaffi said the various factions first had to agree on a common position before they could begin talks with the government.

Several people were wounded and a government helicopter was brought down when the air raid took place, Mr Shaffi told Reuters news agency.

A peace deal was signed last year in Nigeria with one Darfur rebel group, but it has failed to stop the conflict.

The BBC's Alfred Taban in Khartoum says the chances of talks taking place are better than before.

He says the southern government is trying to boost the peace process because international donors have said unless there is peace in Darfur, there will be limited money going into the south for reconstruction following the peace deal there.

The 21-year conflict between north and south ended in 2005, with an autonomous government in the south.

On Sunday, protests took place around the world to demand intervention to end the fighting in Sudan's Darfur region to mark the fourth anniversary of the conflict.

Under the slogan "Time is up... protect Darfur", demonstrators in some 35 capitals turned round some 10,000 hourglasses filled with fake blood to highlight the continuing violence in Darfur.

But Sudan's foreign minister warned that external pressure on the government would not work.

"Those who think that the government will act under pressure are making a grave mistake. We do what we think is right for our people and this is what we have been doing all along," Mr Akol told the BBC's Network Africa.

What was originally a conflict between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur opposed to it has now spilled over into Chad and the Central African Republic.

Last year the government of Sudan agreed in principle to accept a joint African Union/UN peacekeeping force but Khartoum wants the force to be mostly African in composition and for the African Union to take the leading role, not the UN.

There has been a lot of diplomatic debate between Washington, Beijing, New York and Khartoum recently as international pressure is brought to bear on Sudan's government, BBC UN correspondent Laura Trevelyan notes.

The US and the UK have been persuaded to hold off on imposing sanctions against the Sudanese government for now to see if Khartoum does shift significantly and allow for a major deployment of peacekeepers.

Darfur: Why Genocide is Difficult to Prosecute

From the Christian Science Monitor

As public consciousness of the grim situation in Darfur grows, the difficulty of prosecuting what is often popularly called genocide is becoming clearer.

For years, the term genocide was used to describe the ultimate crime. But that crime was rarely – if ever – charged, since international courts were too weak.

Now, the mechanics of international justice are modestly rising to confront man's inhumanity to man: take, for example, the International Criminal Court and the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals here at The Hague.

Yet at the same time, the political sensitivity surrounding a genocide charge, which requires nations to intervene under international law, is creating friction. The cases of Rwanda, Bosnia, and now Darfur demonstrate this.

Sunday, protesters in 35 nations and more than 280 US cities marched against what a UN mission calls "apocalyptic" scenes still emerging from the Darfur war, now spreading from Sudan to Chad. Protest groups, including Amnesty International, called on Britain and the US to help create a peacekeeping force.

So is Darfur a genocide? A US Holocaust Memorial Museum committee and Colin Powell have said it is. So do at least two human rights reports. One French expert, Marc Lavergne, calls it "worse than a genocide" since mass killings are not done out of racial hatred, but because Darfurians are simply "in the way" of Sudan's plans to control land.

Yet many Sudanese experts and an International Criminal Court (ICC) don't term it genocide. They say it doesn't fit the 1948 Geneva Convention definition to win a case. This requires absolute proof of "mental intent" to kill or displace based on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Hence, an ICC prosecutor this winter did not charge a Sudanese interior minister and a rebel Janjaweed militia leader with "genocide," but crimes against humanity.

The word genocide raises deep legal and moral conundrums in a globalizing world, experts say: The term has gained popular usage in a media age to describe mass atrocities, as in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia. Yet prosecutors and world courts are ever more cautious about leveling the charge, even when it may apply – since it raises a requirement to intervene.

"Genocide is an explicit call to action under the 1948 treaty, a call to prevent and punish," says Diane Orentlicher at American University in Washington. Recent court rulings show that "if you wait until there is a legal certainty to prove genocide, you have waited too long," she adds.

That's where politics enter. A party or state charged with genocide will likely be isolated and stigmatized in the global community, perhaps even making the situation worse. This is disputed on Darfur. Some Darfur activists feel Sudan hasn't been charged with genocide because that would make it impossible for governments to deal with Khartoum.

The politics of genocide rose in a ruling on Bosnia this February. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague did not find Serbia guilty of genocide in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in the early 1990s. Rather, it found Serbia culpable in not preventing genocide in the Srebrenica massacre, and awarded no damages.

The ruling outraged scholars like Ruth Wedgwood of Johns Hopkins University who told the Monitor it "appeared to be a posthumous acquittal of [then President] Slobodan Milosevic for genocide. The court didn't look at a pattern of crimes in Bosnia, but selectively picked its evidence."

Early this month it came to light that ICJ judges did not read and did not seek to investigate a huge range of materials from Belgrade that were used as evidence by the UN-sanctioned Yugoslavia Tribunal, just down the street in this city.

New York Times reporter Marlise Simons wrote that the ICJ ruling "raised some eyebrows because aspects of Serbian military involvement are already known from records of earlier [Tribunal] trials.... In late 1993, for instance, more than 1,800 officers and noncommissioned men from the Yugoslav Army were serving in the Bosnian Serb Army, and were deployed, paid, promoted, or retired by Belgrade [and] given dual identities" through a secret office known as the 30th Personnel Center of the General Staff."

ICJ defenders say it is a civil not a criminal court, and that its purpose is to settle disputes between nations to keep amity and peace intact. Critics say the ruling seemed more about conciliation than justice.

"A lot has changed in the past 12 years; the EU is anxious to normalize relations with Serbia," says an American jurist with ties to The Hague, who requested anonymity. "I'm sure there are political pressures. The court probably didn't want to send Serbia back to the 1990s, isolate it, make it a pariah state in perpetuity.... When it came to the legal standard required to prove genocide, the court shrank."

(Serb fugitives Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, architects of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, still face genocide charges at the tribunal.)

UNHCR head Louise Arbour, who as chief prosecutor at the Yugoslav tribunal charged Mr. Milosevic with genocide, told the Monitor that courts should resist politics: "At the end of the day, there's going to be tension between peace and justice. By saying that genocide is a destabilizing charge [to the country accused], you politicize the justice issue," she said. Regarding Darfur, she said, "The UN embraced a responsibility to protect citizens from genocide…. But in Darfur, [head of the ICC investigation Antonio] Cassese looked for three months with a large staff and could find no genocidal intent. He couldn't find a case."

That document, "The 2005 Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the UN Secretary-General," finds that the brutality in Darfur is for "purposes of counter-insurgency warfare."

Yet legal scholar Nsongurua Udombana at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, states bluntly that the Cassesse report finds no genocide in Darfur – to avoid an obligation to act.

In a closely argued essay, "An Escape from Reason" in the Spring 2006 issue of The International Lawyer, he says Darfur is prima facie far closer to genocide than the report finds.

One conundrum: "It is impossible to determine genocide while it is actually happening," Mr. Udombana says. He adds, "By not calling it a genocide, it appears to make the issue less urgent than it actually is."

Indeed, mass killings can create new on-the-ground dynamics, he suggests: Whether or not precise causes of intent can be determined by outside investigators, still, as rapes and murders continue on their bloody way, war can breed an intent to exterminate on the grounds of group identity.

He agrees with Samantha Powers, author of "The Age of Genocide," that Darfur has spawned a dynamic in which Arabs are killing Africans, and lighter skinned and darker skinned groups are set against each other. He says a confession by a high ranking Sudanese official isn't needed to prove genocidal intent. It can be shown via a common standard of "practice and pattern" of crime.

Mr. Lavergne of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris says prosecuting mass crimes boils down to two often different motives: an effort to change behavior, or an effort to punish. In the midst of a nightmare like Darfur, he says, a genocide charge may not be the best way to change behavior, though he admits the problem is ambiguous.

He also questions if Darfur is a genocide. The extermination is not aimed at Darfurian identity: "Darfurians who live in Khartoum are not targeted," he notes.

For years "genocide" was a sanctified word, emerging from the Holocaust, and it defined mass atrocities like the Armenian genocide, or the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia. But its popular use rose in the midst of the Rwanda and Bosnia wars.

French scholar Jacques Semelin, author of the book "Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacres and Genocide," notes that "In Nuremburg, the charges were crimes against humanity. Genocide didn't come into the legal framework until 1948 in Geneva."

Bosnia was an early instance of systematic mass killings in close proximity to a region, Europe, with an incorporated value system based on history that contained an assumption that such crimes would "never again" take place.

Reports of mass killings along the Drina River in 1992, with Bosnian Muslim villages purged and teachers and elders shot, created a dilemma for Europe and the US. The US State Department's initial downplaying of killings and prison camps led one mid-level US diplomat, Richard Johnson, to write "The Pin-Stripe Approach to Genocide" – an early effort to pair the term with an event that seemed to warrant it.

At the time, little notion existed of international courts as a tool to deal with mass crimes. That has changed. The Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals, the 1998 Treaty of Rome, the decision of the UN Security Council to empower indictments on Darfur by the ICC, the pressure on Serbia and Croatia to hand over war criminals – have created pressure on regimes to change behavior, though not a preventive one.

For John Packer of Human Rights Internet in Ottawa, the world is in an "awkward moment" between the old Westphalian system of adjudication, "based on sovereign states and designed to create peace and stability between them, and a new developing model of international law."

The ICJ ruling on Bosnia "brings this awkward moment into relief," he says. "The court was caught willfully disregarding evidence showing Serbia's culpability, to avoid being put in a difficult spot."

Darfur: Deep-Founded Disaster

From CBS News

Darfur has gone on for so long that camps for displaced people are taking on an air of permanence, relief workers are barely holding their own, and there is no prospect of any of these people going home, no matter how much the world protests.

Aid officials call Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

It is also one of the most complex, reports CBS News foreign correspondent Allen Pizzey.

The simple version is that ethnic Arabs are conducting genocide against black African tribes people across an area of Sudan almost the size of Texas. But, in fact, violence has become so endemic that the two million people who are now displaced and homeless have enemies on all sides.

Two or three militia groups have splintered into more than a dozen that range from the Janjaweed to tribal-based warlords and — political factions all fighting each other, adds Pizzey.

The sprawling, overcrowded and ever-growing camps serve as their recruiting grounds.

There is nothing the aid agencies, which feed four million people, can do about it.

And, as it that wasn't enough, a few days ago a United Nations assessment team had to flee for their lives from a bombing raid by the Sudanese air force.

"We have no communication with them," Chris Czerwinski, of the World Food Program, tells Pizzey.

The 7,000 African Union soldiers who are there as peacekeepers can barely protect themselves.

The latest plan calls for an additional 3,000 troops from the United Nations. That is supposed to be grow into a 21000-strong joint UN-African Union force, if the Sudanese agree and the international community gets its act together.

"Put your money where your mouth is, because they keep saying Darfur is huge," said Radia Achouri, a spokesperson for the U.N. mission in Sudan. "It's a problem. We need to do something about it. Well, prove it. Because the international community also has to prove that it is serious about Darfur."

If the world does not act, the camps will be the best part of the crisis because the longer politicians argue about what to do, the worse the security situation becomes, and the number of people that aid cannot reach grows larger by the day.

Darfur: AU Chief Calls for Financial Support

From the Sudan Tribune

Alpha Omar Konare, visiting Chairman of the Commission of the African Union (AU), called here Sunday for the international community’s logistic and financial supports for the AU peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The AU chief made the call in a press conference following his meeting with Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir, during which they discussed a three-phase plan on deploying UN-AU hybrid force in the western Sudanese region Darfur according to an agreement reached by the UN, the AU and the Sudanese government last November.

"If the demanded logistic, financial and equipment supports are provided for the African forces in Darfur, they can deal with the challenges there," Konare told the reporters.

He reiterated that the Darfur problem must be resolved through political process, stressing AU’s determination to hold its responsibility.

The AU chief, meanwhile, accused the Darfur rebel movements, which have refused to accept an AU-sponsored Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed by the Sudanese government and a rebel faction on May 5 last year, of continuing military activities.

Calling on all the non-signatories of the DPA to be involved in the peace process, Konare stressed that the Darfur problem should be resolved by the Sudanese themselves.

Konare left Khartoum Sunday evening after winding up a several hours short visit to Sudan.

The UN, the AU and the Sudanese government agreed in November last year on a three-phase support plan, also known as the Annan plan as it was put forward by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

With the first phase of the plan, also known as a light support package, already underway, the three parties reached an agreement in principle in Addis Ababa on April 9 to inaugurate the second phase of a UN support plan for the AU mission in Darfur, known as "the heavy support phase."

The second phase involves the deployment of 3,000 UN troops and six attack helicopters in Darfur to support the 7,800-strongAfrican force, as well as preparation for the next phase, in which a much larger UN force would be sent to the region.

On April 16, the Sudanese government announced its approval of inaugurating the second phase.

Majzoub al-Khalifa, the Sudanese presidential adviser, said Sunday that Sudan did not oppose the deployment of additional troops in Darfur as long as all the forces there should be commanded by the AU.

He disclosed that the President al-Bashir had stressed to Konare the commitment of the Sudanese Armed Forces to a two-month ceasefire, which started 10 days ago, to create the atmosphere for the resumption of the peace negotiations.

Rape in Darfur

An op-ed by Kathryn Cameron Porter of the Leadership Council for Human Rights in The Washington Times

In every conflict zone in the world, women bear the brunt of the burden. The situation in Sudan is no exception.

During a recent fact-finding mission to Darfur, I saw firsthand the scars of war, evidenced by refugee women's painful stories as they shared with me the harsh realities of their day-to-day lives. No one I met said that she herself had been raped, but they talked about many they knew who had been; it was clear that discussing sexual attacks on others was a way for them to talk about their own ordeals without becoming doubly victimized by the intense stigma and lost honor associated with rape in this part of the world. Despite the taboo of discussing it, rape is a matter of course in Darfur.

Women in the camps I visited asked for better security so that they could search for firewood and gather food for their families without fear of being brutalized or killed. If you can't give us that, they said, at least give us an alternative source of fuel so that we can avoid being attacked out in the fields. As they know all too well, in Darfur, hunting women has become a sport.

No one, it seems, is interested in giving Darfurian women so much as a solution to the problem of collecting firewood, never mind a place at the negotiating table. While the world is outraged by reports of atrocities against women and the use of rape as a tool of war, women's basic needs are ignored by actors on all sides -- the rebels, the Sudanese government and the so-called civilized Westerners involved in the negotiations.

This lack of regard for women marks the ultimate obscenity in the midst of a sustained killing spree that is better characterized as greed-o-cide than genocide; a massacre of complex dimensions that includes not only ethnic and religious components but also pure money lust -- contrary to popular belief, the killing does not break down strictly along sectarian lines.

The rebels in Darfur want money. They will let Darfurians, especially innocent women and children, bleed for the cameras to advance their agenda. Photographing these starving, dehydrated refugees has become a fund-raising method for heart-hardened nongovernmental organizations (NGO). Meanwhile, the Sudanese government could today pull back the janjaweed, who are doing the raping and killing, if desired. But the horror continues. Both sides exclude women from the discussion of achieving security. While many in the West push sanctions, in reality this would raise the possibility of all-out civil war, and millions would die. In Sudan, nothing is as it seems.

The inability of men to look at the whole package and the needs of women increases the number of women and children that will die in the ongoing conflict. The tragic bottom line is that women are worth literally one-half, or even one-quarter of their male counterparts in terms of blood money. Women's worth must be highlighted to alleviate their urgent plight. Even Darfurian women who escape into neighboring countries are double victims with little recourse. In Cairo and other refugee destinations, for instance, women who have fled Sudan are subject to further gender-based persecution and violence. And as in so many parts of the world, women's voices simply do not carry weight.

We in the West like to think the terrible events unfolding in Darfur cannot continue on our watch, but they do. Every day women are being raped and dying for firewood. Yet when they try to speak up, their voices are silenced from all sides. We will remain complicit in their suffering until we recognize that women are the focal point around which everything is centered. They are the key to unlocking international security issues. If women were equally valued and their basic needs met, it would stem the movement of people across borders currently causing security nightmares. This is where the seeds of terrorism are sown.

Women also play a crucial role in solving the environmental degradation and societal inequalities that spawned the conflict in the first place. As Swanee Hunt writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in her piece titled "Let Women Rule," "the world could use more sway and less swagger." Her words ring especially true for Sudan. However, if the men at the negotiating table pursue their current course, without valuing or including women, evil will continue to prevail in Darfur.

Darfur: Rebels Claim Downing a Helicopter

From VOA

Rebels in Sudan's embattled Darfur region say they have shot down a Sudan Armed Forces helicopter, which had attacked their positions -- capturing two Sudanese soldiers. From Khartoum, Noel King reports the fighting comes as rebels in Darfur meet in an attempt to unify various factions.

For several months, rebels in Darfur have attempted to hold talks aimed at re-uniting splintered factions.

Observers say a united rebel front will be easier to negotiate with, rather than attempting to deal with the dozen or more rebel factions on the ground in Darfur.

But rebels charge the Sudan government has repeatedly bombed their meetings, despite vowing to give the rebels time to negotiate.

Sudan Liberation Army Commander Ibrahim al-Hilu spoke to VOA by phone from Darfur.

He told VOA that the SLA has captured a Sudanese Air force pilot and another soldier, who has not yet been identified.

"Yesterday the government air force attacked al Hashaba area with helicopters. Our forces dealt with them and we captured Mouawiya Hussein Mohammed (allegedly the pilot)," al-Hilu says.

A Sudan Armed Forces Spokesman denies knowledge of the incident.

Sawarmy Khalid tells VOA the army lost contact with a helicopter, Sunday, after pilots reported the aircraft would make an emergency landing in north Darfur.

He says the helicopter was merely on a reconnaissance flight and was not bombing rebel positions.

The Darfur rebels have been trying to unite since last year.

CAR: The Forgotten Conflict

From the AP

In this forgotten corner of Africa devastated by a forgotten conflict, no men work, no women cook, no children attend school.

Here, there is not a soul in sight.

Here, empty homes stand silently side by side: straw roofs burned away, dry mud walls scarred black by flames, earthen floors covered with ash and debris. Some, smashed in, don't stand at all.

This tiny village is one of hundreds torched and reduced to rubble by security forces hunting suspected rebels over the last year in Central African Republic's troubled northwest, according to government officials, soldiers, humanitarian workers and villagers in the region.

“It's a forgotten crisis, if it was ever remembered in the first place,” actress Mia Farrow, a U.N. Children's Fund goodwill ambassador, said during a recent visit.

Only a half dozen foreign aid groups operate here, and the ones that do are baffled there are so few.

The U.N. says tens of thousands of women have been raped by different factions. Hundreds of thousands lack access to clean water and shelter. Thousands of farmers have been unable to seed their fields, prompting warnings food shortages may be on the horizon.

Watching from afar as tall yellow grass sprouts around their charred homes, the displaced keep away from roads that carry army troops and presidential guards, running in panic at the mere sound of approaching vehicles.

They sleep in the open, surviving on swamp water, leaves and what's left of their crops.

“Why don't we move back? We're afraid to, everybody is afraid to,” said Emmanuel Lockoulet Djerada, mayor of another ruined village a few miles from Gbarain whose entire population of several thousand has lived in the bush for more than a year. “There is nobody to protect us. We are at the mercy of God.”

Battered by coups and mutinies for decades, Central African Republic, a country slightly smaller than Texas, is no stranger to war and conflict. President Francois Bozize came to power in 2003 at the head of an insurgent army that swept down from the north and seized the capital in a hail of mortar-fire, ousting ex-President Ange-Felix Patasse.

The rebellion in the northwest appears to have evolved in 2005 in part out of widespread banditry and a complete breakdown of law and order. The country of 4 million has just a few thousand soldiers, but they, like the police, are rarely seen outside major towns. Diplomats in Bangui estimate the government controls just 2 percent of the national territory.

Uganda: Victims Prefer Peace Over Punishment

From Reuters

Pasca Lakob doesn't see much point in punishing the Ugandan guerrilla leader whose fighters murdered many of her family and friends.

"His atrocities are so evil, there's no punishment that could fit the crime. They might as well pardon him," she said of Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.

Many Ugandans living in the north agree, despite having borne the brunt of a vicious two-decade insurgency that killed tens of thousands of people and spawned 1.7 million refugees.

Peace talks aiming to end one of Africa's longest wars restarted on Thursday in southern Sudan, but their success hinges on the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Kony and four other commanders are wanted for war crimes by the ICC and the fugitive rebel leader has said he will never make peace unless international tribunal drops the charges.

Lakob, 30, has reason to want Kony indicted.

"The LRA killed most of my family and husband's family," she said. "I returned to my village one evening to find their bodies. They had been beaten to death with clubs."

She fled that night to one of the north's miserably congested refugee camps, where she lived for 10 years before moving back home, buoyed by a truce signed last year between the LRA and the government at peace talks.

Harrowing as her tale is, Lakob wants peace more than retribution. "I can forgive him if he stops this," she said, as a malnourished child with a swollen belly devoured a small slice of mango next to her mud hut.

Since peace talks started, a wave of popular opposition to the ICC amongst northern Ugandans -- the main victims of Kony's cult-like rebel group -- has dismayed rights groups.

Northerners say only a lifting of the indictments will bring lasting peace.

"That is what is going to decide the future of Uganda," northern politician and peace campaigner Norbert Mao told Reuters. "The ICC ... must stay out of the process."

Traditional leaders from Kony's Acholi tribe want him and his henchmen to undergo a reconciliation ritual.

Traditional, or Mato Oput, justice involves a murderer facing relatives of the victim and admitting his crime before both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep's blood.

The ICC has said it will not withdraw its warrants and U.N. officials have said those who blame the tribunal for holding up the peace process are engaging in revisionist history.

Groups like Human Rights Watch say the LRA leaders must face penalties that reflect the gravity of their crimes, which include killing civilians, mutilating victims and kidnapping children to recruit as fighters and sex-slaves.

Some northerners agree.

"He has committed a crime and must face justice. Instead of talking, why doesn't the ICC take action?" said Alphonse Otto, 67, who lives in Pabbo refugee camp alongside 50,000 others.

Demonstrations Go Ahead Worldwide Over Darfur Plight

From DPA

Demonstrations were going ahead in some 35 cities worldwide Sunday to draw attention to the plight of victims of the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. According to UN estimates, over 200,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in 2003 when, according to the UN, the Sudanese government allowed Arab Janjaweed militias to force out black Africans from their homelands, displacing some two million.

The aim of the protests, staged by humanitarian organisations including Amnesty International as part of the Global Day for Darfur, is to urge the deployment of an effective peacekeeping force to protect refugees.

Under the slogan, "Time is up ... protect Darfur," demonstrators were to turn round some 10,000 hourglasses filled with fake blood to highlight the ongoing violence in Darfur, the BBC reported Sunday.

Events held included a rally in London opposite the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, while in Berlin an interactive event at the Sony Center, one of the city's main tourist attractions, was staged.

In Rome, demonstrators marched across the city to the Colosseum and in Cairo a day of cultural events was held including the screening of a documentary entitled "Jihad on Horse Back" containing victims' testimony.

In the Nigerian capital, Abuja, protestors shouted, "Stop stalling", outside the Sudanese embassy.

An appeal signed by stars including Mick Jagger and George Clooney called on the world to "end its stalling and take decisive action".

Darfur: Rebels Report Government Air Raids

From Reuters

Sudanese government aircraft on Sunday attacked the site where rebel leaders in the Darfur region were planning to hold unity talks, injuring several people, one of the faction leaders said.

Ahmed Abdel Shafi, head of one of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) factions which did not make peace with the government last year, told Reuters the rebels had brought down one of two helicopter gunships which took part in the attack.

The helicopters, together with an Antonov plane, attacked at 9.30 a.m. (0630 GMT) at a site in North Darfur state. He declined to be more specific about the location and he did not say whether any leaders had yet arrived there.

"We brought one gunship down. We have several wounded but the situation is under control now," Abdel Shafi added.

The commander of another SLM faction, Jar el-Nabi Abdel Karim, told Reuters that government planes and helicopters had attacked a separate target near Hashaba in North Darfur but there were no injuries there.

A Sudanese armed forces spokesman said he had no knowledge of the attacks. He noted last week's statement by presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa that the armed forces have not fought with the rebels for the past two months.

Darfur: US Sees Progress

From Reuters

The United States said on Sunday that Sudan was "falling in line" on accepting a major U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur and welcomed progress at weekend talks towards a political settlement to the conflict.

"There's enough international pressure now and enough support from (Sudan's) allies" for such a force, Andrew Natsios, Washington's special envoy on Darfur, told Reuters, citing Egypt and China in particular.

He said there was now a "broad international movement" behind the deployment of a so-called "hybrid force" of more than 20,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers and police in the western Sudanese region where four years of fighting have killed at least 200,000 people and displaced some 2.5 million.

"The Sudanese have been resisting it, but gradually on that front they've been falling in line," Natsios said in a telephone interview from the Libyan capital Tripoli after talks on Darfur involving the United Nations, African Union and more than a dozen countries.

A joint communique from the talks, where Sudan was represented by its foreign minister, said sustained funding was needed for the 5,000 AU peacekeepers now in Darfur until the transition to the "hybrid operation" took place.

The United States accuses Sudan of allowing genocide to take place in Darfur, and President George W. Bush has told Khartoum it has one last chance to accept the full U.N.-AU contingent or face international sanctions.

Sudan has so far agreed to accept just 3,500 U.N. military and police personnel on top of the overstretched AU force, one of whose officers acknowledged last week that Arab militia in Darfur were killing and pillaging with impunity.

The conflict between rebels, government forces and the militia, known as Janjaweed, has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Natsios said the talks in Libya had deliberately kept away from the peacekeeping issue and focused instead on delivering a plan for a political settlement under the umbrella of the AU and U.N.

"We all agree...that while the peacekeeping operation is essential, we want to raise the visibility and importance of the political negotiations up to the same level," Natsios said.

One of the key obstacles has been that the Darfur rebels themselves are split. A peace deal in May last year was signed by only one of three rebel factions.

Until now, diplomats and analysts say, competing initiatives including from regional players like Libya and Eritrea, have enabled the rebel factions to stall by playing off one side against the other.

The joint communique, entitled the "Tripoli consensus", said the talks "agreed on the need for convergence and coordination of all these initiatives under an AU-U.N. lead".

"I would call it steady progress," said Natsios, declining to use the term breakthrough.

Libya's Africa minister Ali Treiki said a mechanism was needed to bring together first the neighbouring countries affected by the crisis -- Sudan, Libya, Chad and Eritrea -- and then the Sudanese factions which had not signed the peace deal.

He said such meetings should take place in Tripoli within the next three weeks. It was not immediately clear how the rebel groups would respond.

This weekend's talks brought together the U.N., AU, Arab League and European Union with ministers or officials from Libya, Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, the United States, China, Britain, France, Russia, Canada, Norway and the Netherlands.

Darfur: Gadhafi Urges World To End Crisis

From the AP

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Saturday urged African, Arab and Western diplomats to work with Sudanese rebels to find an immediate solution to the crisis in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

Libya is hosting a two-day conference aimed at exploring ways to persuade all the groups fighting in Darfur to sign a comprehensive peace agreement, officials said. The Sudanese government and one major rebel group signed the Darfur Peace Agreement last year, but other factions have rejected the deal, saying it is insufficient.

"My advice is to lay down a final agenda for solutions in the (Darfur) region that we all agree on, and whoever rejects it, he should be ignored and not supported," Gadhafi said.

The Libyan leader greeted the representatives, including the U.S. envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, in the city of Surt on Libya's Mediterranean coast, about 230 miles east of the capital, Tripoli. After Gadhafi's speech, the officials flew to the capital to formally begin the conference.

During his remarks, Gadhafi warned some of the rebel groups may not believe that resolving the crisis is in their best interests.

"We have to be careful that some of these rebel parties are rejecting even the solutions that are beneficial for them, and that means they are seeking other things rather than solutions," he said.

Ethnic African rebels have been battling the Arab-led Sudanese army and pro-government janjaweed militiamen in Darfur for the past four years, killing some 200,000 people and turning the region into the world's largest humanitarian disaster.

There are currently 7,000 AU peacekeepers in Darfur, but the violence has shown little sign of ending. Sudan recently agreed to allow 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers to reinforce the outnumbered AU force following months of stalling.

Gadhafi has been accused of supporting Arab militias in Darfur in the past, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir seized power with Libya's backing.

Nevertheless, Libya has high hopes for the conference, which the country's secretary of African affairs, Ali al-Treiki, called "the most important conference held over Darfur." The meeting includes representatives from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Sudan, Chad, Egypt, the African Union, the Arab League and other nations.

Gadhafi's decision to host the meeting represents one more step in Libya's recent efforts to reverse its international isolation. The Libyan leader surprised the world in late 2003 when he swore off terrorism and announced plans to dismantle his country's weapons of mass destruction programs. The U.S. has since opened an embassy in Tripoli.

Globe For Darfur

Find events here

Protests will take place on Sunday (29th April) in over 35 capitals around the world to mark the fourth anniversary of the deadly conflict in Darfur.

Around the world 10,000 hourglasses filled with fake blood will be turned by activists to mark the start of the conflict four years ago. Events will be staged from Mongolia to Iceland, the U.S. to the Ukraine.

“Four years after the start of the conflict the blood of more than two hundred thousand murdered Darfuri’s stains the deserts of Darfur. The lives of the local population lie in tatters, as does the reputation of the international community,” said Ismail Jarbo, a survivor from Darfur who will be taking part in the events.

The Globe for Darfur, a global network of dozens of different organisations is calling for the imposition of targeted sanctions to force all sides to respect the ceasefire, end attacks on civilians, allow the deployment of an effective international peacekeeping force, and stop attacks on the aid operation.

In particular the group is calling on the U.N. to impose asset freezes and travel bans on individuals continuing the violence and to enlarge the arms embargo.

“The government of Sudan has played the international community for fools and our politicians have fallen into every trap they’ve set. Despite more than two hundred thousand deaths, two million made homeless and two new countries becoming embroiled in the war, the international community continues to delay decisive action. Today we’re saying time is up, the people of Darfur need protection now, ” said Larry Rossin, a spokesperson for the Globe for Darfur.

The situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate with over 400,000 newly displaced people in the last year, including over 86,000 already in 2007. Four million people are now affected by the crisis, which has spread from Sudan into Chad and the Central African Republic, and almost a quarter of these cannot get assistance because of insecurity.

Events are scheduled in the following locations and more are expected to join before Sunday:

Austria, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mali, Mauritius, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Senegal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, UK, Ukraine, USA.

Sudan: Forgotten Refugees Complain of World's Neglect

From Reuters

Adam Ibrahim was born at this refugee camp 25 years ago, after his parents fled what is now called Eritrea. He never saw his home country and thinks his own children may be born as refugees.

"That is if I survive here in the first place," he said.

Like many other refugees, he believes other more recent humanitarian crises, notably Darfur in western Sudan, have distracted the world's attention from his people's plight.

"The world has forgotten us," he said, clad in a Brazilian soccer jersey and surrounded by scores of refugees who came to complain about the dismal standards of basic services to the visiting head of the United Nations refugees agency.

Wars, famines and worsening human rights situations have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to eastern Sudan since 1968.

The United Nations says some 133,000 refugees, the majority of them Eritreans with small numbers of Ethiopians and Somalis, live in 12 camps in eastern Sudan. Thousands of them, however, lack proper refugee status, and thus full rights.

They all live in small straw huts in vast areas surrounded by barren lands and bare hills in the province of Kasala, whose leaders say the influx of refugees has depleted the resources of their towns and villages.

"They are forgotten people, both the refugees and the hosting communities," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said at the Kilo 26 camp on Thursday.

"I think it is important to recognise that the hosting communities have been sharing their very meagre resources in a very generous attitude, and let's be honest, without much support, even from our side," he said.

Aid workers say donors have been less enthusiastic about funding the decades-old humanitarian operation in eastern Sudan, opting to focus more on areas like Darfur, where a four-year-old conflict has displaced some 2.5 million people and where media coverage is more high profile.

Guterres inspected a small compound that passes for a clinic, where patients lie in sweltering heat and drugs for disease like malaria are running short.

Many refugees said health services were dismal.

"Look around you. If all these people are medically tested, I swear to God you will not find a single guy who is healthy," said Ibrahim, standing behind a fence as police barred him and other refugees from meeting Guterres.

Another man, who arrived in 1981 fleeing violence between separatist groups and the Ethiopian occupation, gave a rundown of other problems.

"We suffer from unemployment," he said, giving his name as Mohamed. "In 30 years here, nobody here made it to university." Other refugees around him were shouting "Medicine! Water!"

Darfur: U.N. Plans to Bolster Refugee Work

From Reuters

The United Nations refugee agency plans to bolster its operations in West Darfur, where more than 700,000 have been driven from their homes, spokesman William Spindler said on Friday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres agreed during a visit to Sudan this week to boost the agency's presence in the conflict-torn region in exchange for a Sudanese government promise of more protection for its staff.

"If we can have minimum assurances that our staff will be safe, we will do more missions to the field," Spindler told a news briefing. He said the UNHCR would "scale up protection and camp management" to help those uprooted by four years of militia and rebel fighting, but offered no other details.

Some 2.5 million people have been displaced throughout the three Darfur states since rebels there rose up against the government in February 2003, saying Khartoum discriminated against non-Arab farmers there.

Fighting with government-backed militia has seen homes burnt, villages destroyed and civilians killed in what the United Nations calls one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Washington says the violence amounts to genocide. The Khartoum rejects the term and calls the militia outlaws.

Guterres, during his four-day visit to Sudan which ended on Thursday, also promised more funds for some 136,000 refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia housed for decades in the east.

UNCHR's first refugee camp in eastern Sudan was established in 1968, and small numbers of Eritreans still arrive at the camps regularly, amid continued instability over an unresolved border dispute with Ethiopia.

Guterres expressed "deep concern" for those living in the camps, the UNHCR spokesman said.

"He was shocked by the poor conditions in which they live, without adequate water supplies, limited access to health services, poor sanitation and malnourishment, among other problems," Spindler said.

Darfur: U.N., Sudan Agree Force Urgent

From the Washington Post

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that he and Sudan's president have agreed on the need for a quick decision to deploy a new United Nations-African Union joint peacekeeping force in the Darfur region.

Ban told The Associated Press in an interview that he spoke to President Omar al-Bashir by phone this week about getting U.N. troops and equipment into Darfur to beef up the 7,000-strong AU force which has been unable to end the four-year conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

Al-Bashir agreed in November to a three-phase U.N. plan to strengthen the AU force. But he has since backed off the deployment of the third and final phase _ a 20,000-strong "hybrid" U.N.-AU force _ saying he would only allow a larger African force with technical and logistical support from the United Nations.

"We agreed on the necessity and importance and urgency of making swift agreement on (the) hybrid operation, and we decided to first of all have technical consultation as soon as possible _ as soon as our proposal is ready," Ban said of his conversation with al-Bashir.

After five months of stalling, the Sudanese president recently gave the go-ahead for the second phase _ a "heavy support package" with 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with six attack helicopters. The first phase, a light support package including U.N. police advisers, civilian staff and additional resources and technical support, has already been sent to Darfur.

The secretary-general cautioned that there was no agreement yet from the Sudanese to deploy the hybrid force.

"I'm making some progress, even small progress," he said. "First and foremost, we need to agree on full deployment of this hybrid (force) as soon as possible."

Ban said the first step is for the United Nations and the African Union to agree on a proposal for the hybrid operation which will then be sent to Sudan for the government to consider.

"Then African Union, United Nations and Sudanese government will be able to have an agreement on this hybrid operation," he said.

But the secretary-general stressed that an agreement is needed not only on the military track but on the political track.

The undermanned and under-equipped AU force has been unable to stop fighting between the government and ethnic African rebels. The violence has only increased since a peace deal last year signed by the government and one rebel group. Other rebel groups rejected the deal and continued fighting.

While pressing for deployment of the hybrid force, Ban said efforts must continue to reach a political settlement of the Darfur conflict and fully implement a 2005 peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.

U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson and AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim are trying to get all the parties to the Darfur conflict to the negotiating table, Ban said, indicating they are making progress.

"We are not there yet," he said. "There are still some more rebel groups that have not been contacted, and who have not joined this political process."

How to Prevent the Next Darfur

From TIME

The first sign that we are entering a dead zone is the carcass of a camel, gathering flies and red dust. Since camels can go for three weeks without water, according to local farmers, the heap of fur, hair and bleached bones is an ominous sight. We enter a mud-walled, straw-roofed village. Instead of offering the usual smiles and waves, the children duck away. The reason for the villagers' fear becomes evident a few minutes later: nine turbaned men on horseback, members of the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, appear with rifles over their shoulders. We are gone before they can react, but their presence on the road in broad daylight provides a hint of their sense of invulnerability.

Two more hours across scorched mountains and rocky desert, and we are in Iriba, the logistics base in northeast Chad for six camps of refugees from Darfur. Aid workers there tell me that as horrific as the suffering in Darfur is today, it is almost surely going to get worse. "The water is going. The firewood is gone. The land has lost its ability to regenerate," says Palouma Ponlibae, an agriculture and natural-resources officer for the relief agency CARE. "The refugees are going to have to move. There's going to be nothing here to sustain life."

Darfur, a barren, mountainous land just below the Sahara in western Sudan, is the world's worst man-made disaster. In four years, according to the U.N., fighting has killed more than 200,000 people and made refugees of 2.5 million more. The conflict is typically characterized as genocide, waged by the Arab Janjaweed and their backers in the Sudanese government, against Darfur's black Africans. But what is often overlooked is that the roots of the conflict may have more to do with ecology than ethnicity. To live on the poor and arid soil of the Sahel--just south of the Sahara--is to be mired in an eternal fight for water, food and shelter. The few pockets of good land have been the focus of intermittent conflict for decades between nomads (who tend to be Arabs) and settled farmers (who are both Arab and African). That competition is intensifying. The Sahara is advancing steadily south, smothering soil with sand. Rainfall has been declining in the region for the past half-century, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In Darfur there are too many people in a hot, poor, shrinking land, and it's not hard to start a fight in a place like that.

The devastation of Darfur highlights the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on societies across Africa. The U.N. estimates that the lives of as many as 90 million Africans--most of them in and around the Sahara--could be "at risk" on account of global warming. Many of Africa's armed conflicts can be explained as tinderboxes of climate change lit by the spark of ancient rivalry. In Somalia, nearly two decades of anarchy have been exacerbated by eight years of drought. In Zimbabwe, relief agencies say President Robert Mugabe's disastrous rule is being overtaken by an even greater catastrophe, a three-month drought that wiped out the maize crop, fueling tensions between government-allied haves and opposition have-nots. Apart from drought, other environmental challenges can prove deadly. A growing number of experts believe the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is best understood as a contest between too many people on too little land.

Environmental skeptics, including the Bush Administration, dispute the more dire predictions about climate change. But others in the developed world are beginning to sound alarms about the weather's role in warmaking. On April 16, 11 former U.S. admirals and generals published a report for the think tank CNA Corporation that described climate change as a "threat multiplier" in volatile parts of the world. The next day, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett hosted the first-ever debate on climate change and armed conflict at the U.N. Security Council. "What makes wars start?" asked Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies too ... but also to peace and security itself."

So Darfur is a test case--not just of the world's commitment to stop genocide but also of its ability to prevent future African resource wars. Already, the fighting in western Sudan has spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. At the Guereda refugee camp in Chad, near the Sudanese border, staff members from the International Medical Corps increasingly find themselves mediating conflicts between refugees and local farmers, who complain that the influx of refugees has ruined their land. The refugee camps house concentrated populations that are too big for the land to support, and water and firewood are all but exhausted. "Resources are simply insufficient to meet the overwhelming needs," warns Serge Malé, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Chad.

Uganda: U.S and UK Urged to Send Envoys

From Reuters

Washington and London should appoint envoys to help ensure Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels do not squander their best hope for peace in 20 years, an influential think-tank said on Friday.

Talks resumed in south Sudan on Thursday, with U.N. envoy and former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano warning that if squandered, the opportunity may never return to end a war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced 1.7 million people.

"The Juba peace process has advanced further than any previous initiative and is the best hope for a negotiated resolution," said the International Crisis Group (ICG). "But the favourable political constellation is likely to be fleeting."

Among a raft of recommendations by the ICG, which analyses trouble-spots round the world, was that the British and U.S. governments also appoint senior diplomats to work with Chissano.

The envoys could then jointly push for success in Juba, the capital of south Sudan, while also seeking a separate process to plan reconstruction in the shattered north of Uganda, and ensure the government refrains from threats to pursue LRA rebels into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, ICG said.

"Both sides must be persuaded through the use of targeted leverage that peace is their only worthwhile option."

Together with the United Nations, London and Washington's envoys to the peace process should also work out a regional military strategy to prevent fighting flaring again should the Juba talks fail, the think-tank added.

Britain is Uganda's former colonial ruler and a big aid contributor, while Washington makes no secret of its impatience for an end to one of the world's most brutal yet neglected wars.

Led by self-declared prophet Joseph Kony and born out of the ethnic Acholi community in 1986, the LRA guerrillas are notorious for mutilating civilians and kidnapping children.

In camps where they were supposed to receive refuge, north Ugandans have instead suffered horrors, with 1,000 people a week dying from treatable diseases, ICG said, quoting local figures.

"HIV rates in the north hover near 12 percent, twice the national average. Over 12 percent of females aged 30-44 are widows...Women have faced widespread sexual and domestic violence," it added in its new report on Uganda.

The think-tank urged international donors, who finance 40 percent of Uganda's budget, to use that influence in favour of peace. It also called for a more representative LRA team.

"The LRA delegation, mainly diaspora Acholi detached from the conflict, lacks competency, credibility and cohesiveness ... In the rigidly hierarchical LRA, Joseph Kony is the key to a peace deal, and efforts to engage him must be enhanced."

Perhaps the biggest sticking point, however, remains International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments for Kony and four of his commanders, analysts say. Kony has said he will never agree to peace unless the warrants are scrapped.

But ICG said the warrants "helped bring the LRA to the table, keep it engaged and are not insurmountable obstacles" given options like traditional Acholi reconciliation ceremonies after which officials could call for the warrants to be dropped.

Executive Summary of the ICG report

With peace negotiations due to restart in the southern Sudanese town of Juba on 26 April, the ten-month-old peace process between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government still has a chance of ending one of Africa’s longest, most brutal conflicts. The present process is more structured and inclusive than previous efforts to end the twenty-year-old conflict, benefits from greater - if still inadequate - external involvement, and has made some significant gains, notably removing most LRA fighters from Northern Uganda. And the implementation of the agreement to end Sudan’s north-south civil war has reduced both the LRA’s and the Ugandan army’s room for manoeuvre.

But the favourable political constellation is likely to be fleeting and to simply resume the process as previously constituted would be a recipe for failure. It is hamstrung by major weaknesses in representation, structure, and substance. The LRA delegation, mainly diaspora Acholi detached from the conflict, lacks competency, credibility, and cohesiveness. The agenda is being negotiated sequentially, so progress has been thwarted by failure to fully implement the cessation of hostilities agreement and fundamental disagreement over the issue of comprehensive solutions to the conflict. And the Juba negotiations are the wrong forum for tackling the underlying economic, political, and social problems of northern Uganda, critical in ending the north-south divide in Uganda and breaking the cycle of conflict that has racked the country since 1986.

The comprehensive peace process that is required should proceed along two tracks. One is Juba, which should concentrate on ending the military conflict and providing a general roadmap for handling the broader grievances that need to be addressed, including accountability for serious crimes. The second track is one to which the government and donors should commit at Juba but then pursue subsequently in a broader, more inclusive forum in Uganda. It will need to empower northern Ugandans, involving, among others, Acholi traditional leaders and civil society, including women and youth, to steer redevelopment, rehabilitation, and reconciliation initiatives within their community.

The rebels’ temporary withdrawal from the talks on 12 January provided an opening to reshape the mediation efforts, expand external engagement and create a stronger and better institutionalised process. As part of a compromise to bring the LRA back to the table, South Africa, Kenya, Congo, Tanzania and Mozambique agreed to join the talks as observers. The Government of Southern Sudan, whose initiative Juba has been and which has continued to lead it, must now ensure that an effective infrastructure is in place to handle the logistical and technical aspects. In the rigidly hierarchical LRA, Joseph Kony is the key to a peace deal, and efforts to engage him must be enhanced. A respected intermediary, most likely the new UN Special Envoy for LRA-affected areas and former Mozambique president, Joaquim Chissano, should deliver directly to him a security and livelihood package that can be the basis for further discussion. Negotiations should be restructured so that small working groups can pursue all issues in parallel.

Both sides must be persuaded through the use of targeted leverage that peace is their only worthwhile option. The ICC investigation – although controversial – has increased pressure on the LRA and created an incentive for its indicted leaders to negotiate their safety. It should continue, at least until a just peace with robust accountability mechanisms is in place.

The UN, through a new panel of experts, and host countries should investigate and impose penalties on those in the diaspora who undermine the peace process by giving the LRA financial and material support. Contingency planning on a regional security strategy for use against the LRA if Juba fails should begin now with an initiative for military and political cooperation between Uganda, the Government of Southern Sudan, Congo and the UN missions in Sudan (UNMIS) and Congo (MONUC). Donors, who finance 40 per cent of Uganda’s budget, must make clear to the government that they will not support unilateral military action against the LRA in Congo if talks collapse and that funding of northern Uganda’s redevelopment is conditional on the active participation of local leaders.

Genocide: The Diplomat Who Cracked

From the Los Angeles Times

John Marshall Evans, a career U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in Central and Eastern Europe, was sworn in as ambassador to Armenia in August 2004. In February 2005, Evans made a trip to California, the capital state of the Armenian diaspora. At three different meetings with Armenian-American groups, when asked about Washington's lack of official recognition of the 1915-23 Armenian genocide as a "genocide," Evans said some variation of the following: "I will today call it the Armenian Genocide."

Since this deviated from State Department guidelines, Evans was eventually asked to resign. Now the mild-mannered foreign service veteran is preparing a book about his "intellectual journey" that led him "rock the boat" of U.S. policy.

I caught up with Evans this March, a few days after he gave the keynote speech explaining his dissent to the second annual banquet for USC's Institute of Armenian Studies. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

To start with, when did it become unusual, your preparation for this job? When you said that basically you wanted to read up on this controversial historical thing before assuming the ambassadorship, one does that before one goes to a foreign posting, anyway; at what point did that process become different than your usual diplomatic posting, in terms of fact-gathering, and conclusions that you might come up with? [...]

[M]y nomination for Yerevan was announced in the first half of May 2004. I was confirmed in late June, I can give you the exact dates. And then I had a window of a couple weeks in which I went into a kind of monastic retreat and read everything I possibly could about Armenia.

Now, I had the advantage that [...] [in] 1989, that year I had received a Cox Fellowship, and was spending a year reading Ottoman history at the Wilson Center in Washington, at the Kennan Institute. And so I read a lot of history. So I wasn't coming to the issue of Armenian history with a totally blank slate; I'd read mostly mainstream books -- Lord Kinross and various others who have written about Ottoman history. [...]

I read as much as I could before I went out to Yerevan. I read [former U.S. ambassador Henry] Morgenthau's story, which had a profound impact on me, and [...] I proceeded [to Yerevan], but not before having a discussion with my immediate boss about the issue of the genocide, and how it was treated in State Department materials. I felt that it was not being adequately addressed, but at that point I had no sense that we couldn't do a better job basically in the same lines that we were already using. I had not abandoned the policy, but I felt we could do a much better job with that policy, and in particular using the things that had been said by President Bush and President Clinton.

So I went out there and I became increasingly frustrated when I returned to that subject, at the fact that it was considered taboo. And it was; I couldn't really get it onto the agenda for at least a discussion. [...]

Let me also just say that I never departed from the U.S. policy line in Armenia. The question, if you look at public opinion polls in Armenia, what you see is that although the question of recognition of the genocide is on the minds of people, it's sort of the ninth or tenth issue behind social stability, having a job, worrying about their retirement, you know, worrying about Nagorno-Karabakh. And then you get down to the single digits, the people who put the recognition of the genocide at the top of their lists. Single digits.

So in a way it's much bigger for the diaspora?

That's right. That's correct. And I did not ever -- I rarely got a question about it when serving as U.S. ambassador to Armenia, and I never used the word 'genocide' in answering any question there. Almost never; I can't remember a time when a local journalist asked me about it.

By the time of my trip out here in February in 2005 I'd been in place for about six months, and I'd done more reading. I was more upset than ever about both the issue and the policy, and about the prospect that this is just going to be a situation that was going to continue ad infinitum. I mean, Turkish interests, and U.S. interests in Turkey; a country with 72 million, a member of NATO of long standing, with valuable strategic property in the Middle East, secular, Muslim, in a time when we're contending with forces in the Muslim world that have produced this fundamentalist ideology and terrorism. Turkey is a hugely important ally, and little landlocked Armenia, population 3 million at best, is never going weigh in those scales in such a way as to even make a showing.

And yet, the facts of the matter, the facts of the historical matter, and the legal definition of genocide as basically codified in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which we ratified, does count for something in my view. I felt that something had to be done to rock the boat, and to open up some space around this taboo subject, which in the State Department was routinely referred to as "the G-word." Which to me is sort of reminiscent of potty training. [...]

I never in 35 years had encountered a U.S. policy that I could not at least live with. Certainly not one in my own area of responsibility.

[edit]

But was it reasonable for you to imagine that your rocking the boat wouldn't get you fired? [...]

Clearly when I was here in February 2005, I knew that by mentioning this word, I could get myself in trouble. I didn't know precisely what the degree of that trouble would be, but I knew that it could range from a slap on the wrist to being immediately canned. And as it turned out it was something between those extremes: I got more than a mere slap on the wrist, I wasn't immediately canned. I basically was eased out after about 18 months, although I had more time on my clock. [...] I was basically asked to go ahead and retire. [...]

How would you characterize the reaction of your superiors or even just your colleagues when you said "Hey, this is a policy that I'm beginning to believe is untenable, we need to shift it this way"? And when I ask you how would you characterize it, is it your impression that they, too believed that this is a historically settled issue, it's just one that is inconvenient to talk about?

Nobody ever used those terms, and I never had that kind of a conversation. [...]

The problem for me was not that we were having an argument about it, the problem for me was we couldn't talk about it. I couldn't even get it on the agenda. And I couldn't take the policy positions that had been devised for dealing with this, I couldn't get them properly deployed, because nobody wanted to even touch it. I kept running into this sort of impossible Maginot Line, or just obstacle to even getting the issue onto the table, and that's where I decided to do an end run.

So it was less that people were saying, you know, "Stop knocking on this door"; it was more of just like, "Oh, I gotta go fill up my water glass now"?

Well, it was sort of "Now's not the time." But there never -- given the realities -- there never would be a good time to face this issue, if one does the traditional calculations of well, Turkey is 72 million, Armenia is 3 million, it was 92 years and counting, and so on and so forth. This is a formula for it to go on for 500 years.

Genocide: Pols Sidestep Debate Over Armenian Genocide

From the Politico

By regional standards, the Armenian genocide happened yesterday. Or, if you're the government of Turkey or the United States, there was no genocide.

Now Congress is weighing in, and the diplomatic foray has gotten messy.

The Bush administration, like others before it, refuses to use the word "genocide." Beginning in 1915, more than 1.5 million Armenians died when the Ottoman government forced the relocation of the population. President Bush has a reason not to call it genocide: That would anger the Turkish government, an ally and a Muslim democracy which has threatened to revoke permission for the U.S. to use an important air base over the issue, among other repercussions.

Resolutions recognizing and condemning the genocide have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, and the administration is vigorously opposing them. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a joint letter that the resolution could "harm American troops in the field."

And Turkey's lobbying prowess has already forced four co-sponsors to back off the bill.

Nonetheless, backers of the nonbinding resolutions in Congress feel this could be the year it happens and have gained momentum from a Los Angeles Times editorial last weekend in support of the measure, which now has 190 co-sponsors in the House and 29 in the Senate version sponsored by Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, among numerous other reputable historical groups, has described the event as genocide, explaining in a 2005 letter to the Turkish government that, beginning in April 1915, "…under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens -- an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture and forced death marches…"

The Turkish government, which replaced the Ottomans, disputes the account and is fighting to prevent debate on the resolution. A Turkish Embassy spokesman said that the Armenian deaths -- they place the toll at 200,000 -- occurred during an armed revolt by Armenian rebels who opposed being relocated by the Ottoman government.

"We don't believe the term 'genocide' has anything to do with what happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. It's a very incriminating and serious claim," the spokesman said.

Turkey has long threatened repercussions in trade and diplomatic relations if the U.S. recognizes the genocide. "It's going to affect our cooperation," the embassy spokesman said. "We don't see what the advantages are for the United States in passing this. Only the enemies of the United States and Turkey would be happy."

The Turkish government is backing up its talk with serious lobbying power. The Livingston Group -- the powerful firm of former Louisiana Republican congressman Bob Livingston -- represents Turkey and is fighting the resolution. According to the watchdog group Public Citizen, Turkey paid the Livingston Group $9 million between 2000 and 2004, and Turkey recently hired DLA Piper, the firm of former House minority leader Dick Gephardt, to provide access to Democrats.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill feel the pressure. So far, four House members who initially co-sponsored the resolution, including Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), have withdrawn their support.

"I initially did it as a favor to Schiff," Scott said, referring to one of the bill's lead sponsors, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). "If I had known it would be this kind of a mess, I'd never have gotten into it. I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. Out of fairness, let them settle it."

Scott said he withdrew as a co-sponsor after meeting with a number of his Turkish-American constituents. (His district includes a sizable Turkish-American population.)

Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) also supported the resolution before he withdrew as a co-sponsor. His office said he had "no official comment" on the flip-flop.

Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) also pulled his name, saying in a statement to The Politico, "…although I sympathize with the Armenian claims for justice, the timing of this resolution is unfortunate, given everything in the Middle East and our need to maintain a close engagement with our friends in Turkey. As we continue to work together to promote peace in the Middle East and Iraq, nothing should come between U.S. engagement with Turkey."

Republicans also see the resolution as an opportunity to paint Democrats as novices in international diplomacy. "It's another irresponsible foreign policy flap on the part of the majority on the heels of their trip to Syria," said Florida Rep. Adam Putnam, the third-ranking member in the Republican caucus.

Genocide: Four Jewish Groups Back Turkey on Armenian Resolution

From Turkish Daily News

Four large U.S. Jewish groups have lent support to Turkey's position in opposing the passage of two resolutions pending in Congress that call for officialrecognition of World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

B'nai B'rith International, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) have recently conveyed a letter from Turkish Jews who oppose the resolution to U.S. congressional leaders, officials from the groups told the Turkish Daily News.

In their letter, leading Turkish Jews have urged congressional leaders to postpone considering the genocide measures. In conveying the letter to Congressofficials, the four U.S. Jewish groups tacitly agreed to its contents.

Going further, the ADL and JINSA have also added their own statements opposing the bill.

"I don't think congressional action will help reconcile the issue. The resolution takes a position; it comes to a judgment," said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

"The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn't be the arbiter of that history, nor should the U.S. Congress," he told JTA, a Jewish press organization.

But the four groups' move does not mean that U.S. Jews are united in opposing the genocide measures.

A number of other large U.S. Jewish organizations have distanced themselves from the controversy, while some of the resolutions' top sponsors and backers are Jewish.

Darfur: Sanctions Unlikely to Hurt Sudan

From the AP

President Bush is threatening to punish Sudan by cutting off its vital oil industry from the U.S. financial system, unless Khartoum takes steps to calm troubled Darfur.

But such sanctions are unlikely to hurt Sudan at all, oil analysts say: China, its biggest customer, already has adapted to similar U.S. pressure on Iran by buying oil in another powerful, rising currency - euros - and can do the same on Sudan.

The issue highlights the difficulty the United States faces in finding effective ways to sanction Sudan in order to ease the humanitarian suffering in Darfur, at a time when oil prices are high and the U.S. dollar is weak.

Both Bush and the U.S. envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, have threatened in recent days to bar an additional 29 Sudanese companies, many of them involved in the oil trade, from the U.S. banking system if Khartoum does not agree to implement fully the U.N.'s peacekeeping plan for Darfur.

They also warned the U.S. government would more aggressively block dollar transactions by Sudanese oil companies that are already on the U.S. sanctions list.

Washington hopes that preventing Sudan from selling oil for dollars - the currency used by global oil markets for pricing - would prove an economic burden, forcing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to succumb to international pressure.

[edit]

But Iran has had little difficulty switching its oil sales from dollars to euros when needed under international sanctions pressure - and Sudan could do the same, many financial experts say.

China has already made the switch to buying oil in euros in some of its deals with Iran, said Victor Shum, a Singapore-based oil trading analyst at U.S. consultant Purvin & Gertz Inc.

"The Chinese today do buy some their Iranian oil in euros instead of U.S. dollars," he said. Chinese officials have not commented publicly on the issue.

China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports, and oil sales account for 70 percent of the African country's export revenue.

The reason Sudan and Iran can adapt?

Oil is priced in dollars on the world's exchanges, but buyers and sellers can easily use international exchange rates to convert any oil contract into euros, said Mikkal Herberg, a former oil executive now with the U.S.-based National Bureau for Asian Research.

Such a move could even be beneficial given the declining value of the U.S. dollar.

"I don't see that it causes them any trouble," he said of both Iran and Sudan. "Crude is denominated in dollars, but someone could choose to pay them in euros at a dollar equivalent. ... With the direction of dollars and euros, that's not such a bad choice."

The euro has appreciated more than 50 percent against the dollar in the past five years.

U.S. officials, however, have been strong in their assertions that they can impact Sudan with such moves.

Bush said last week that the United States would give the United Nations more time to strike a deal with Khartoum on peacekeepers, but said U.S. sanctions would quickly follow if al-Bashir failed to implement the full U.N. plan.

"We believe it will have an effect on the economy, a substantial effect," Natsios told Congress this month. "And the reason we know is because it's having an effect on the Iranian ... economy."

Natsios asserted that even though the U.S. does not buy oil from Sudan, such sanctions could have an impact because "the current practice is all international oil transactions, regardless of which country or which company, are in dollars."

But Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at Chatham House, a think tank in London, called such statements "wishful thinking."

"In this environment of high commodity prices, Sudan will be fairly resilient in finding alternatives," Vines said.

Last month, the governor of Iran's central bank, Ebrahim Sheibany, announced that more than 50 percent of the country's oil business now is being done in currencies other than the dollar.

"Iranian oil will be sold unless the Iranians decide not to sell it," said Larry Goldstein, president of New York-based PIRA Energy Group.

Sudan has another advantage - experience in adapting to sanctions, notes John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group. Nearly 10 years ago, the United States cut off 130 Sudanese companies from the U.S. system over a different dispute.

"The Sudanese oil industry has thus grown up around the sanctions, and learned how to conduct transactions that easily avoid the sanctions framework," Prendergast said.

Sudan only began exporting crude oil in 1999, but in 2006 it was expected to earn between $4 billion and $5 billion in oil revenue, said Abdul Rahim Hamdi, a former finance minister who still advises the government on economic matters.

The one area where U.S. financial pressure against Iran apparently has had success is in persuading international banks and oil firms to curtail their business with the country, cutting much-needed investment in Iran's oil and gas sectors.

Even there, success has been spotty. The Bush administration this week spoke out against a huge European gas development deal between an Austrian firm and Iran, but is unable to block it outright.

Washington could pursue a similar strategy against Sudan. But Vines said Khartoum is less vulnerable because it does not suffer from the same shortage of outside capital.

"Sudan has the investment it needs at the moment" - mostly from China, he said. Chinese investment has helped boost Sudan's oil production to 500,000 barrels a day, driving economic growth to 12 percent and making Khartoum boom last year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Eric Reeves, a Sudan expert at Smith College in the U.S., contended the only way Washington would have real impact is to go to China and say Darfur is "a tier one issue in our bilateral relationship." Reeves is dismissive of what the Bush administration has termed a Plan B of coercive measures like the moves against Sudan's oil companies.

"The Bush administration, and most particularly Natsios, oversold Plan B," Reeves said.

Darfur: Sudan to Release Food Aid

From Reuters

Sudan will release 100,000 tonnes of cereals bound for the troubled Darfur region after holding it in Port Sudan for checks, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday Sudan was holding the aid on the basis it was genetically modified, a charge the WFP has strongly denied.

"There had been a temporary hold on the release, which sometimes happens in order for the fitness of the commodities to be confirmed," Kenro Oshidari, the WFP representative in Sudan said in a statement.

"The matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties concerned and the food released for delivery to the beneficiaries."

Sources in the aid community said Sudan was blocking the shipment because it wanted the WFP to buy local food products.

Sudan has said it checks aid shipments arriving in the country fearing they could be genetically modified because of the government's concern for people's safety.

The United Nations estimates around 200,000 people have been killed in the vast western region and 2.5 million displaced since 2003, when rebel groups took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect.

Human rights groups say the Sudanese government armed Arab militias to help quell the rebellion. Khartoum denies the charges and says only 9,000 have died in the conflict.

The WFP's new head, Josette Sheeran, began a visit to Sudan on Wednesday, her first field trip as executive director of the agency. Sheeran is a former undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. State Department.

Darfur: Chadian Refugees Show Extent of Conflict

From Reuters

Hassan Abdallah stood in front of a group of young girls wearing bright dresses to greet the head of the United Nations refugee agency at this camp for Chadian refugees in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

Raising his arms high and urging the girls to repeat after him, he chanted: "This is our land. Long live Chad."

"Yes, I know I am in Sudan," the 35-year-old teacher later said. "But I sang this because I miss my country."

Um Shalaya, established in May 2006, houses some 5,000 of around 25,000 Chadian refugees who fled the violence between government forces, rebel groups, Arab gunmen and African farming tribes in the border area between Chad and Sudan.

Their presence is evidence of the regional character of the conflict in Darfur, which has spilled over to Chad and the Central African Republic involving several armed groups that have forced people to flee their homes in all three countries.

Sudan and Chad trade accusations of supporting rebel groups on each side. N'djamena also accuses Khartoum of supporting Arab militias that attack African farming tribes inside Chad and are also accused of many atrocities in Darfur.

"This is not a local conflict," Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said at the camp on Wednesday.

"It is becoming a very complex regional situation. We have Darfurians in Chad. We have displaced inside Darfur, displaced inside Chad and now we have Chadians also in Darfur and this of course makes it very, very difficult for us all," he said.

The United Nations says the majority of Chadian refugees in Darfur prefer to live nearer their country's border to attend to their lands, but hundreds of refugees have fled the rising violence to the Um Shalaya camp in recent months.

"My house was burned and my money was stolen," said Abdallah, a father of 10 who arrived at the camp a year ago.

He now teaches children at the camp and organises their activities. Nearby, two girls were playing on a swing next to a small volleyball court.

Several refugees said they were feeling safer at the camp. "As long as we are not being killed, we are fine," said 32-year-old Ismail Zakaria.

But many others, like 57-year-old Ismail Dawoud, said they fled the violence only to find themselves attacked and harassed by Arab nomads who roam around the camp.

Adam, a member of the Dajos African tribe like the majority at the camp, said Arab gunmen robbed a small store belonging to his son Ismail, stole his money and some sugar.

"They then fired three shots in the air," he said.

Armed men also stole a car belonging to the U.N. refugee agency and tried in April to break into the compound of an aide group at the camp.

Many nomads on camels and donkeys could be seen around Um Shalaya on Wednesday. One young man was riding a donkey near the camp, holding a rifle in his hand.

[edit]

Leaders of the neighbouring Um Shalaya village, mainly from the African Tama tribe, have asked the chief of the nomads, with whom they have friendly ties, to keep his men off the camp.

As a sign of the commitment for peace, they shared bread with him, the U.N.'s Guterres and the leaders of the refugees.

"They have managed to find a way to live together," Guterres said. "If this is possible here, it is possible in the whole of Darfur."

For many in the camp, however, security was an item on a long list of demands.

"We want security, more water, soap, medicine, a school to educate the adults, and home appliances," one of the camp leaders told Guterres to the applause of the gathering refugees.

It was a tall order, the senior U.N. official admitted.

"We know that you have suffered," he told them. "We will work together to help you in the best possible way."

Darfur: Roadblocks Only Ensure More Suffering

An op-ed by John Holmes in USA TODAY

Three years ago this April, my predecessor first brought Darfur, Sudan, to the attention of the United Nations Security Council.

And now this April, I too have gone before the Security Council to brief it on the continuing tragedy of Darfur after my recent mission to the region. The cost of inaction continues to be paid in countless thousands of lives lost. How many more Aprils can the people of Darfur endure?

In three years, the number of people dependent on an increasingly fragile humanitarian lifeline in Darfur has quadrupled from 1 million to nearly 4 million.

In recent months, access and safety for the thousands of aid workers have declined precipitously. How can we sustain the world's largest humanitarian operation when needs are growing but our ability to help is severely curtailed? A quick look at the numbers shows how much we have achieved in the past three years — and how much is at risk should bureaucracy and intimidation make humanitarian work untenable.

In April 2004, we had just more than 200 aid workers on the ground assisting 350,000 displaced people. Today, 13,000 aid workers, primarily Sudanese, are assisting almost four times that number. These efforts are helping to reduce malnutrition and improve mortality rates.

But these lifesaving gains could only too quickly evaporate. The problems in Darfur continue unabated and have spread to neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. Some 527,405 people in Darfur have been displaced since last May, despite the signing of a peace agreement then, bringing the number of people displaced to more than 2 million one-third of Darfur's population.

Rape and other sexual attacks committed by all sides continue in a climate of total impunity. Malnutrition rates have begun to climb again, particularly in remote, insecure areas.

Our ability to reach people in need is meanwhile shrinking to dangerously low levels. Only half of those affected by the conflict are regularly receiving clean water and primary health care. Less than 40% receive sanitation services. Worse still, at any one time, nearly one in four people in need can no longer be reached with any assistance, meaning that some 900,000 people are out of reach of the humanitarian lifeline.

Aid workers are under attack as well, in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions. Between June and December 2006, 12 relief workers were killed, more than in the previous two years combined. Last year, 120 humanitarian vehicles were hijacked. Hundreds of thousands of civilians can be cut off from life-sustaining help if and when humanitarian organizations withdraw from areas where their staff have been attacked. All the parties to the conflict share responsibility for these attacks.

Meanwhile, a stream of government red tape has hampered aid operations, sapped morale and limited freedom of movement. A government that should obviously be helping those who are saving the lives of its own citizens has often seemed little interested in doing so.

So what is to be done? First, there should be an immediate end to all attacks against civilians by all sides. Last week, the government of Sudan indicated its acceptance of the second U.N. support package designed to strengthen the African Union's peacekeeping efforts. We welcome this. But speedy, effective implementation remains of the essence and requires Khartoum's full cooperation. The people of Darfur can brook no further delay in the deployment of the full U.N.-A.U. peacekeeping force.

Second, we need safe, unimpeded access so that humanitarians can reach all those in need. One welcome note from my recent mission to Sudan was the signing of a joint communiqu in which Khartoum reaffirmed and extended its 2004 pledge to ease up on visa, customs and other requirements.

Finally, let us not forget that humanitarian action can never be a substitute for a political solution. I urge all parties to the conflict to support the efforts of the special envoys from the A.U. and the U.N. in ensuring adherence to an immediate cease-fire, and getting all the parties around the negotiating table to reach a lasting peace settlement.

Darfur: China Says Boycott Calls Against "Goodwill"

From Reuters

China said on Thursday any calls to boycott next year's Beijing Olympics were against the world's "broad goodwill", after a French presidential candidate raised the possibility of a boycott over Darfur.

Socialist Segolene Royal, who faces Nicolas Sarkozy in a runoff election next month, said on Wednesday she did not rule out a boycott of the Olympics because of China's stance over the bloody turmoil in the Sudan region of Darfur.

China, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, has oil investments in Sudan and rights groups say it has frustrated international efforts to curtail war and atrocities in Darfur, where government-linked militia have been fighting rebels.

"It's not because there is oil in the ground that me must let this abominable genocide happen," Royal told France 2 television.

Asked if France should boycott the Olympic Games to pressure China, Royal said: "I do not exclude it. If there is such inaction, such passivity, all means must be used so that things move."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao did not directly criticise Royal but issued a general warning against sullying China's preparations for the Games.

"The Chinese people have been anticipating and preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics," Liu told a news conference in Beijing. "Using any excuses or political reasons to boycott or oppose it would go against the broad goodwill of the international community.

"We hope the politicians can treat the Beijing Olympic Games with a sober attitude."

Darfur: UN Calls for Ceasefire Before Deployment of Peacekeepers

From Xinhua

The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) on Wednesday called for a cessation of hostilities before a heavy support package could be delivered from the UN to the African Union (AU) force in Darfur.

"For this operation on the Heavy Support Package to be effectively implemented...Violence and military action in Darfur must cease," UNMIS spokesperson Radhia Achouri stressed at a press conference.

She said that Janjaweed, the most famous militia in Darfur, as well as other spoilers must be disarmed, and attacks on humanitarian workers and peacekeepers must stop.

Besides that, all bureaucratic impediments faced in the past must be removed, the UNMIS spokesperson added.

Other preconditions for the delivery of the heavy support package includes a unequivocal and clear consent of the Sudanese government and eventual authorization from the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council, according to the spokesperson.

The Sudanese government announced on April 16 its acceptance of the heavy support package, which is the second step of the three- phased UN peacekeeping plan aimed at deploying a hybrid UN-AU force in Darfur.

However, local media expected that the UN need six months to recruit the 3,000 soldiers demanded by the heavy support package to reinforce the 7800-strong AU peacekeeping force in Darfur.

During the ongoing first phase, the light support package, 105 officers, 33 police advisers and 48 civilian officials are being delivered to Darfur by the UNMIS.

"Progress is being made in implementation of the Light Support Package," Achouri said, adding that the Sudanese National Customs Department had facilitated prompt clearance of pharmaceuticals needed for UN medical support to the African force.

Darfur: Kristof Speaks at Cornell

Two related articles - the second has video.

From The Ithaca Journal

Famed New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof spoke at Cornell University Wednesday about the genocide in Darfur, an issue he has reported on heavily.

Kristof, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for his reporting of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement and again in 2006 for commentary, spoke at Cornell's Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall.

The decorated journalist challenged the American public and world to change its attitude about Darfur during an interview before his address.

“I think there is a mistaken feeling that Darfur is just this ugly situation a long way away where people are busy slaughtering each other and they have been for a long time and they will continue to do so for hundreds of years, and that's really wrong and self-defeating,” Kristof said.

Kristof has criticized President Bush's inaction on the Darfur genocide but said Wednesday that Bush has done better than previous presidents.

“It's really hard to judge president Bush on this issue because he's done more than Clinton did in Rwanda, so by historical standards he's done slightly better than the appalling jobs the presidents have always done,” Kristof said. “That said, he's still done an appalling job.”

Kristof was at Cornell to give this year's Kaplan Family Distinguished Lecture in Public Service. The journalist said he would like to see a stronger stance from Bush on Darfur.

“For a president who said three years ago ‘this is genocide,' and in 2007 is finally getting around to talking about sanctions that in the future may be imposed, I think that is pretty pathetic,” he said.

The media's coverage of Darfur has been criticized for too often reducing the complexities of the issue to a simple story line. Kristof said the issues can be simple.

“It's true that it is complex with lots of tribes and lots of bad actors, but that's always true about genocide,” he said. “I think that at the end of the day, when historians look back, what will strike them as salient is that a government decided as a matter of national policy to choose people on the basis of tribe and skin color and throw their babies in bonfires. It does come down to a pretty basic storyline that I think is echoed precisely in Darfur.”

The cause is not lost in Darfur, Kristof stressed, citing that an agreement was almost reached in May 2006.

“I think the real way to solve this is to pressure Sudan to reach a peace agreement. Fundamentally, a negotiated peace between the government and various Darfur tribes is the way that this can end and will end if it does,” he said.

From the Cornell Daily Sun

Nearly 600 Cornellians attended yesterday’s lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof in Kennedy’s Call Auditorium, on the topic of the Darfur genocide. Kristof, who is currently a New York Times columnist, received a standing ovation for his report on the dire situation in Sudan and his proposals for what can be done to change it. In 2006, Kristof won a second Pulitzer for his coverage of the genocide.

“It’s obviously a little unusual for a columnist to harp on a … somewhat obscure area of the world,” Kristof said. “But I want to haunt you with some of these scenes.”

He then presented the audience with several pictures of the refugees he met in Sudan, sharing the stories he heard from them.

“You think you’ve seen the rock bottom of human behavior, and then you see this,” he added, referring to the image he showed of a man whose eyes had been gouged out by bayonets. He emphasized that the Sudanese government was undoubtedly orchestrating a plan to “de-populate rural Darfur” by terrorizing the local population.

Through his travels, he also saw “systematic rape of women,” which meant they were effectively exiled from the rest of society, if not eventually arrested for adultery. He added that women were afraid of seeking medical attention because they were tracked down at hospitals as well.

For Kristof, the Sudanese government implemented this genocide because it was the most practical route for them to take.

“[This means that] we can affect their strategy, and we can change their costs and benefits,” he added. It was for this reason that Kristof is against sending in ground troops, and instead hoped that the Sudanese government would be pressured into negotiating a peace agreement.

While he admitted that President George W. Bush was doing a “slightly better” job than former President Bill Clinton on the Rwandan genocide or previous conflicts, he still felt Bush’s performance was “appalling.” According to him, it was up to Bush and other leaders to “promote Darfur to the top of the agenda,” and for this, Kristof suggested delivering a prime-time speech on the issue, or orchestrating a photo op at the White House, among other possibilities. One recommendation he felt would have significant impact on the death toll was to place a no-fly zone over the area so that the Sudanese air force would be unable to bomb villages.

Despite the concrete steps that could be taken, Kristof felt that today’s political leaders would not move on them, and asked for “all sectors of civil society” to take up the call. He admitted that there existed other problems, including diseases such as malaria, that were killing far more people annually than in Darfur, but to Kristof, “genocide is special.”

“I’ve seen kids dying of malaria, of AIDS, but nothing moves me more than going to Darfur and seeing the consequences of a government policy that determines that people are selected on the basis of skin color and tribe and then being thrown into burning huts,” he said. “You go to Darfur and what you see is absolutely evil. … Genocide has to be central on any kind of human agenda.”

Kristof was also concerned about relief efforts in the area. While aid workers could provide minimal medical care to those who made to refugee camps, they are not reaching the rural villages deep within Sudan because the government prevents it. But even for those who are receiving medical care, Kristof mentioned that he felt it inadequate, especially for the survivors who lost their families to the cruel practices by the Janjaweed.

He also believed there may be a “mass evacuation” of aid workers soon because of the increasing banditry, chaos and lack of security in the region, citing that 11 aid workers have recently been killed. With fewer foreign witnesses, Kristof said the genocide could only get worse.

Darfur: Libya to Host Talks as U.S. Patience Ebbs

From Reuters

Key players in the crisis over western Sudan's Darfur region will meet in Libya this weekend as U.S. patience with Sudan runs low and the threat of international sanctions hangs over the Khartoum government.

The United States and Britain are demanding that Sudan accept a strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, where four years of conflict -- termed genocide by Washington -- have killed at least 200,000 people and displaced some 2.5 million.

The talks planned for Saturday and Sunday are the latest in a series hosted by Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi styles himself as an African nationalist and believes the continent should solve its own problems without being reliant on the West.

A Western diplomat said that while Libya hoped for a breakthrough, it was doubtful whether the hosts were prepared to exert sufficient pressure on Sudan to achieve this.

"They (the Libyans) want to get a recommitment to a proper ceasefire, with a set of measures to be taken against anybody who breaks it," the diplomat said, while noting that Libya is opposed to sanctions.

An overstretched African Union (AU) force of some 5,000 peacekeepers has so far failed to stop the violence, and one of its officers said this week that Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, were killing and pillaging with impunity.

The Sudanese government rejects the term genocide and denies any connection with the militias, calling them outlaws and insisting that it takes action against them when it can.

U.S. President George W. Bush has warned Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir he has one last chance to avoid sanctions by allowing a full joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force.

So far Sudan has agreed to a "heavy support package" for the African Union troops in Darfur that includes some 3,500 U.N. military and police personnel.

But Khartoum has not approved a "hybrid" U.N.-AU force of more than 20,000 troops and police, which the U.N. Security Council first authorized last August.

Britain and the United States have been drawing up a sanctions resolution if Sudan continues to balk at U.N. demands, although no date has been set for its introduction in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

Among the measures under consideration are an arms embargo for the entire country. Separately, Washington has already imposed sanctions of its own and is considering more.

Libyan state media have been silent on the weekend talks and diplomats said Libya had not circulated proposals in advance.

Hosted by Gaddafi's Africa minister, the meeting brings together Sudan's foreign minister, special Darfur envoys from the United Nations, African Union, United States, European Union and Britain, and senior officials or ministers from France, Canada, Egypt, Norway, Russia, Chad and Eritrea, diplomats said.

Libya has stepped up its involvement in trying to find a peaceful solution in Darfur and stop that conflict from spreading into neighboring countries.

Libya has taken a lead in trying to broker peace between Chad and Sudan, which accuse each other of supporting rebels involved in cross-border attacks.

In early April, a Libyan envoy in Khartoum announced Libyan and Eritrean observers would be posted along the Chad-Sudan border.

Darfur: House Passes Resolution

From Inside Bay Area

The House voted 425-1 Wednesday to approve Rep. Barbara Lee's resolution calling on the Arab League's member nations to take more aggressive action to halt the genocide in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

Lee, D-Oakland, issued a statement saying the resolution calls on the League of Arab States "to be our partners for peace."

"For too long they have been silent partners in this struggle," she added. "I remember in my trips to Algeria and Egypt several years ago that government officials were reluctant to call the ongoing atrocities in Darfur genocide, and some even denied genocide was taking place."

She noted that even just last week, Egypt expressed opposition to further United Nations sanctions against Sudan, urging instead that Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir be given more time.

"More time for what, more killing?" Lee asked. "We must demand that Bashir follow through on the full deployment of the AU-UN (African Union-United Nations) hybrid force."

Lee's H.Con.Res.7, the Darfur Partners for Peace Act, had 119 co-sponsors, including nine Republicans as well as House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo.

It urges the Arab League's member states to declare the systematic torture, rape and displacement of Darfurians a genocide; to pass a resolution to support a robust hybrid AU-UN peace keeping force to enforce a cease-fire, protect civilians and ensure access to humanitarian aid; and work with the U.N., the AU, and U.S. Special Envoy Andrew Natsios to stabilize the region.

The lone vote against the resolution was cast by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who is running for president in 2008. His spokesman didn't return a call and an e-mail seeking comment Wednesday, but the biography on his congressional Web site says he "never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution."

Darfur: Rebel Faction Calls for 50,000 Peacekeepers

From the Sudan Tribune

A Darfur rebel faction said that the United Nations needs to deploy 50.000 troops in Darfur in order to establish peace in the war-torn province, a press statement said today

A rebel faction dissident from Minni Minawi SLM group, demanded, in a letter sent to the UN Secretary General, to increase the number of the international forces to be deployed in Darfur to 50 thousand instead of 20.000 soldiers.

The leader of the Greater Sudan Liberation Movement (GSLM), Mahgoub Hussein, said “the size of the Region as well as its geographical and environmental setting” require such number of peacekeepers.

The group also announced its support to the imposition of a non-fly zone in Darfur, a project sponsored by the US and the UK at the UN Security Council.

DRC: Bemba Party Ends Boycott of Parliament

From Reuters

Congo's largest opposition party allied to ex-warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba said on Wednesday its deputies were returning to parliament after walking out this month to demand government guarantees for their safety.

Bemba, the defeated contender in last year's elections won by President Joseph Kabila, left Democratic Republic of Congo on April 11 for medical treatment in Portugal following the rout of his militiamen by government troops in fighting in Kinshasa.

Days later, his Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) announced its deputies would stay away from the National Assembly until the government guaranteed their safety and ended harassment by the security forces.

MLC National Executive Secretary Thomas Luhaka said in a statement to parliament on Wednesday that Kabila had agreed to hear the opposition's grievances in a meeting on Thursday.

"The deputies of the MLC parliamentary group ... have decided to resume their activities in the National Assembly," Luhaka said.

Diplomats and analysts have expressed fears that attempts by Kabila's government majority to sideline the opposition could weaken Congo's democracy following last year's first free polls in more than four decades in the former Belgian colony.

The elections, protected by the biggest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, 17,000-strong, were intended to usher in a new period of democratic stability after a 1998-2003 war and decades of chaos and corruption.

"We are convinced that (Kabila's) personal involvement will help enormously in the resolution of the opposition's problems and concerns," Luhaka told Reuters.

Uganda: Peace Talks Resume

From Reuters

Peace talks between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas aimed at ending two decades of civil war resumed on Thursday, three months after the rebels walked out of the negotiations.

Delegates from both sides entered a conference room to begin the face-to-face talks, which were opened by the chief mediator, South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar.

They were also accompanied by the new U.N. envoy for Uganda's peace efforts, former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano, and several Western diplomats.

"We are here to solve problems. Our expectation is things will go smoothly," LRA delegation head Martin Ojul told Reuters ahead of the meeting in the South Sudanese capital Juba.

The head of the government team, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, said: "We are optimistic."

The insurgency, led by guerrillas notorious for murdering and mutilating civilians and kidnapping children to recruit as soldiers, has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 1.7 million into refugee camps.

The desperate conditions in the camps, which lack adequate water and medicine, led the United Nations to describe northern Uganda as one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes.

A truce signed between the two sides last August at talks in Juba raised hopes of an end to one of Africa's longest wars.

But in January the rebels walked out, citing security fears after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir threatened them.

They agreed to come back in March when Chissano met LRA leader Joseph Kony near his eastern Congolese jungle hideout.

The biggest sticking point remains International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against Kony and four other commanders on charges of mass murder, rape and child abduction.

"Our first priorities are security for our LRA leaders and resolution of the ICC issue," Ojul said.

Darfur: Negotiating Peace

From the Council on Foreign Relations - The CFR's interactive Darfur Crisis Guide is here

On its website, the Save Darfur Coalition urges President Bush to strengthen the African Union (AU) force in Sudan’s Darfur region, push for deployment of a UN peacekeeping force, increase humanitarian aid, and establish a no-fly zone over the region. All laudable requests, yet noticeably missing is any entreaty to press for peace negotiations. International efforts to address the crisis in Darfur suffer from the same myopia. Nearly a year since one Darfur rebel group and the Sudanese government signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), zero progress has been made on bringing the other rebel groups—now numbering fifteen—to the negotiating table.

A new CFR.org Crisis Guide takes a multimedia look at the historical background to the Darfur conflict and the role of the United Nations and other international actors. Since fighting broke out in 2003, at least two hundred thousand people have died and more than 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes by fallout from the war between Darfur’s rebels and Sudanese janjaweed militias. In recent months, fighting on the ground has become “increasingly chaotic,” intensifying to include localized tribal conflicts and Arab-on-Arab violence, reports UN Special Envoy Andrew S. Natsios.

Darfur: Sudan Holding Up Food Aid

From Reuters

Sudanese authorities are holding up 100,000 tonnes of sorghum meant for Darfur, alleging that it is genetically modified, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday.

The sorghum, which comes from the United States, is being held up at Port Sudan, a World Food Programme spokeswoman in Rome said, adding that laboratory tests had shown it was not genetically modified.

"We had it tested by a French laboratory along with Canadian split peas which the Sudanese are also objecting to, and neither food consignment is GM. In any case, there is no GM sorghum on the market, it doesn't exist," said the WFP's Caroline Hurford.

"It's a huge amount of food to be held up and our sub-offices in Darfur must be getting quite worried. We hope that we can find a solution quickly and have it released so it can reach the people who need it," she said.

Sources in the aid community said Sudan was blocking the shipment because it wanted the WFP to buy local food products.

"We do intend to buy some amount of food from Sudan as they had a bumper harvest but there are limits to how much we can purchase because of funding. Most food aid is given to us in kind, as is the case with the U.S. sorghum," Hurford said.

The sources said Khartoum may be also using the food aid as a political weapon as international pressure intensifies on the government to stop the violence in Darfur.

Darfur: UN Continuing to Push Final Phases of Peace Plan

From VOA

The United Nations Mission in Sudan said Wednesday it is pleased that Sudan has accepted the second phase of a proposed three-phase U.N. support package for Darfur. But the U.N. said it will continue to push Sudan to accept the third and final phase, involving the deployment of around 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to the region. For VOA, Noel King has this report from Khartoum.

Sudan came under intense pressure from the international community earlier this year to accept U.N. support for the struggling African Union mission currently in Darfur.

But Sudan balked at the proposed deployment of U.N. peacekeepers, likening U.N. entry to colonization.

Sudan this month said it will accept the second phase of U.N. support, involving the deployment of around 3000 peacekeepers backed by heavy equipment, including attack helicopters.

U.N. Mission in Sudan spokesperson Rhadia Achouri told reporters in Khartoum that the U.N. is pleased Sudan has accepted the second phase.

"The agreement on the heavy support package is a positive development. But this package is only the second step. And the ultimate objective remains the deployment of a hybrid force in DarfurAchouri said.

Sudan has yet to agree to the third phase of U.N. support, the so-called U.N./A.U. "hybrid" force which would bolster the African Union with an additional 20,000 U.N. troops.

Achouri said that it is unclear when the three-thousand U.N. peacekeepers called for in the second phase will actually be deployed.

"Nobody can give you an exact time frame. We need troop-contributing countries to come forward with actual offers. We need the cooperation of the government of Sudan to prepare the infrastructure for these people to be deployed on the ground," Achouri said.

The Darfur conflict has entered its fifth year.

Darfur: Peacekeepers Understaffed, Underequipped and Now Under Fire

From The Independent - via POTP

As the sound of a lone bugle playing "The Last Post" rang out, the body of Cdr Anthony Aalene Bozie, draped in the Ghanaian flag, was lifted on to the back of a pick-up truck and taken to the airport. Soldiers from Rwanda, Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana lined the route and saluted.

Such scenes have become all too familiar for the African Union (AU) forces in Darfur. Cdr Bozie was the 10th AU soldier to be killed in April - the deadliest month of its three-year mission in Sudan.

The African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis) was heralded by the international community as an "African solution to an African problem". Its role is to protect civilians from attacks by government-backed militia and rebel groups.

But Amis is not even able to protect itself. It is under-staffed, underequipped and increasingly under fire from rebel groups which believe it has become little more than an extension of the Sudanese government. Darfurians now refer to Amis as the "African Mistake in Sudan" and senior Amis officials are openly asking whether they are serving any purpose being here.

"Amis is doing what it can within the limits of its capabilities," said Brig General E Rurangwa, the deputy commander. "We don't have enough personnel and we don't have enough equipment. It makes it difficult to intervene. You have to protect yourself."

As the security situation has deteriorated, Amis has been concentrating on protecting itself. Amis is supposed to carry out up to 50 patrols a day, protecting women while they collect firewood and go to markets. But patrols are down to as few as three a day across the whole of Darfur, and are optimistically referred to as "confidence-building".

While the soldiers stay in their barracks, nearly four million people remain affected by the conflict. More than 100,000 people were displaced in the first three months of the year. Even those patrols Amis does carry out do not prevent violence. Those living in the camps refer to Amis as the "report writers".

The death of Cdr Bozie has heightened fears among Amis troops. He was shot just 120m from the entrance to Amis headquarters in El Fasher. One Ghanaian officer said: "If I go outside the compound now I am a target." Despite strong words from President George Bush and Tony Blair, Darfur is stuck with Amis. A UN Security Council resolution passed last August authorised the deployment of a 22,000-strong force. But Sudan simply refused to allow the force to enter, and the idea of Western troops shooting their way into a Muslim Arab country was never seriously considered.

Sudan agreed to a so-called AU/UN "hybrid force" last November but has since stalled at every stage of its three-phase deployment.

Phase two, the "heavy support package" of 3,000 UN personnel and equipment such as helicopters, was "re-agreed" by Khartoum last week. Even so, it will take at least six months before it is all in place.

For now, Amis struggles to soldier on. But it is not only personnel they are lacking - even the most basic equipment is absent. At the forward headquarters in El Fasher, few offices have phone lines. Officials are forced to rely on mobile phones but the network is often down for days on end. Communication often breaks down between the headquarters in Khartoum and El Fasher. Faxes are lost and phone calls and emails not returned.

Communications are also a problem in the field, raising serious security concerns. Most of the vehicles do not carry communication equipment. Two-way radios are only just being handed out.

Staff, including senior commanders, have not been paid for four months. Several battalions set to go home were unable to leave until they had been paid. Every day they stayed they were owed more money. The mission was forced to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional pay.

And the 150 language assistants, who the mission relies upon to translate when they go out on patrol, went on strike for five months after not being paid.

Morale, understandably, is low. Soldiers are sitting in their barracks, counting the days until they are allowed to go home. "The mission is a joke," said one senior official. "If we are not achieving anything here, why are we still here?"

Dr Madawi Ibrahim, a Darfurian expert with extensive knowledge of the rebel movement, said Amis has been a "disaster" for Darfur. "The AU lacks leadership. They just don't know how to do things."

The Amis mandate expires at the end of June. Twice in the past 12 months it has been renewed at the last minute, with the promise of extra funds and troops - neither of which have been supplied. There is no guarantee that the AU will agree to renew the mandate once more. Despite its problems, diplomats in Sudan believe that it would be catastrophic for Darfur if the AU left.

The mission is the AU's first attempt at peacekeeping. A failure here would cast serious doubt over the AU's ability to carry out peacekeeping missions in Africa on its own. "If they fail here it will be a disaster for Africa and for the UN," said Dr Ibrahim. "Let us pray they do not fail."

Darfur: AU Says Janjaweed Acting With Impunity

From Reuters

The African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in West Darfur told the United Nations on Wednesday that Arab militias were killing and pillaging in the region without arrests by the Sudanese authorities.

Major Harry Soko, a Rwandan officer who briefed the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said that the presence of Sudanese rebel groups in his area had also led to conflict and hundreds of deaths in the past several months.

"Arab militias believed to be employed by the (Sudanese government) ... roam freely in our area of responsibility, threatening and killing anybody against the interests of the government," he told Antonio Guterres, the visiting U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

An African Union police commander, who did not give his name, told the same briefing that the militias committed crimes from banditry to rape and Sudanese police did not arrest them.

The government denies any connection with the militias, known locally as Janjaweed and blamed for many of the attacks on villages inhabited by non-Arab farming communities. It says they are outlaws and that it takes action against them when it can.

Soko said one area where the rebel presence has added to the violence in recent months was around Sirba, about 45 km (30 miles) north of El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.

"(This has) resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives of Sudanese government personnel, rebels and civilians," he said.

"These areas are no-go areas to AU personnel due to threats by the NRF (the rebel National Redemption Front)," he said.

The NRF is one of the Darfur rebel groups which have refused to sign the peace agreement signed in the Nigerian capital Abuja last year by the government and the main rebel group.

Soko listed a number of obstacles facing the AU troops, including the lack of good roads, attack helicopters, night-vision devices and adequate funding.

Darfur: Displaced Losing Hope of Peace

From Reuters

In Darfur's Krinding Camp, home to more than 30,000 displaced people, Jomaa Zakaria says hopes for a decent life without fear for his children's lives from Arab militiamen are diminishing daily.

"The world does not look at us as human beings," the 38-year-old father of seven said.

He said a recent agreement between Sudan and the United Nations to deploy some 3,500 U.N. military personnel to support the overstretched African Union force in Darfur has failed to lift the gloom at the camp.

"Those 3,000 cannot secure Darfur. We need 20,000 or 25,000 people," he said. Sudan has rejected such a force and says it will not bow to "Western blackmail".

The United Nations say around 200,000 people have been killed in the vast Western region of Darfur since 2003 when rebel groups took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect. Sudan says only 9,000 have perished.

Zakaria and other leaders of the displaced people pleaded for help from Antonio Guterres, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, at a meeting in a small hut at the camp on Tuesday.

They said armed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed, blamed for many atrocities in Darfur, frequently attack the camp with impunity.

"The Janjaweed control everything," said Ibrahim Mohamed Adam, sitting on a straw mat. "I can't go out after sunset. Why should our children suffer?" he said.

Another leader, Ibrahim Ali, said: "The Janjaweed could follow a man to his home, and if they find he has a valuable apparatus like a mobile phone, they would kill him and take it."

"No one chases or arrests and attackers. We want U.N. forces," he said.

Human rights groups say the Sudanese government armed the Janjaweed to help quell the rebellion which erupted in 2003. Khartoum denies the charge, saying the Janjaweed are bandits.

Residents of El-Geneina, capital of the West Darfur state, say the Janjaweed -- a term derived loosely from the Arabic for "devils on horseback" -- roam the town freely in the evening.

After dark on Tuesday, two men on horseback toured the quiet sandy streets of the town near a U.N. building. A pick-up truck with a mounted machinegun roared past Guterres's motorcade.

Residents say such vehicles, usually without licence plates, belong to the Janjaweed.

Guterres arrived in Darfur the day after several aid agencies pulled out of the town of Um Dukhun because of worsening security in the area, which lies in West Darfur state near the border with Chad.

The agencies, which include Britain's Oxfam and Save the Children Spain, said their decision would disrupt services to around 100,000 people in the town and surrounding rural areas.

Guterres told camp leaders that only a political solution, not any large peacekeeping force, would bring peace to Darfur.

He told them the situation in Darfur has become a wider conflict involving militias, rebels and bandits. To Zakaria, however, those words rang hollow.

"We have listened to the same words over and over. There is no hope," he said. "If the situation here does not improve, I will ask to be moved to another country."

Darfur: Conversation With John Negroponte

From the NewsHour

GWEN IFILL: More than 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million people have been displaced in the ongoing conflict and genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Last week, in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, President Bush renewed the threat of sanctions against the Sudanese government.

For an update on the political and diplomatic efforts on the ground, we turn to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who has just returned from a tour of the region. He joins us from the State Department.

Mr. Ambassador, welcome.

JOHN NEGROPONTE, Deputy Secretary of State: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: You have just returned. It's been nearly a year since last May's brokered agreement with the Sudanese government and the rebel groups there. What has happened since then?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, I think, regrettably, Gwen, the situation has not improved. In fact, I visited an internally displaced person's camp in Darfur whose population had doubled since the signing of the peace accord last May.

Security hasn't improved, either. The government has not disarmed these Arab militias, which could not exist without government support and financing. And there's been little progress towards the acceptance by the government of Sudan of additional international peacekeeping forces, which are really urgently needed to help stabilize the situation in the Darfur region.

GWEN IFILL: The government of Sudan, of course, is headed by President Omar Bashir, who you met with. What did he tell you? You came back saying you were discouraged after your meeting. What did he tell you when you asked him about these things?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, I think the main thing that he indicated was that he felt that the United Nations had only a minimal role to play in the Darfur situation, that basically this should be handled by the African Union, and the United Nations should simply write a check to support the international union forces.

Our position, and the international community's position, on the other hand, is that the African Union forces in and of themselves are not adequate to the task and that a peacekeeping mission, to be effective, must be conducted according to United Nations' practices and standards, and a much more robust force is needed there on an urgent basis.

Right now, there are 5,000 African Union forces in the Darfur region -- military forces, that is -- and we believe that that number should be somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000, not just 5,000.

GWEN IFILL: If President Bashir were to decide tomorrow to go along with your suggestion, which it doesn't look like he's about to do, how do you know that he would keep any of the promises he's made since there have been so many made and broken before?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, that's an excellent question. And so what he says would not be sufficient in and of itself. We have quite long experience with commitments of this kind undertaken in the past and then not fulfilled.

So I think we would also want to insist on full and prompt implementation. And for us, the test is not the commitment in and of itself or the piece of paper that is signed, but the fact of improvement in the situation on the ground and the full-fledged implementation of the undertakings that have been put forward.

GWEN IFILL: You have used strong language about this situation since you've been back. You said the government gives the impression of being guilty of a deliberate campaign of intimidation, and you've also said time is running out. When you say "time," what do you mean, days, weeks, months?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, as the president said, he outlined a number of possible steps that he would take if the situation was not dramatically improved in the near future. I hesitate to put a specific timeline on this, but I would say it's a matter of weeks.

GWEN IFILL: So when you say steps, you mean sanctions, you mean forbidding U.S. companies from doing business with businesses controlled by the government of Sudan?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: It would be -- the president did outline a number of different sanctions, of naming additional individuals who would be blacklisted, if you will, the possibility of preventing the Sudanese air force from carrying out its activities over the Darfur area, and a whole range of other possible steps.

GWEN IFILL: While you were traveling in Africa, you also went to Mauritania, where you met with an assistant foreign secretary from China. Are part of these steps also to ask countries like China or to demand of countries like China, which trade with Sudan, which do business with Sudan, to also for them to impose sanctions, as well?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, if it came to -- and the president did mention the fact that we would begin consulting with other members of the Security Council of the United Nations about the possibility of an additional U.N. Security Council resolution that would impose additional sanctions on Sudan, so that's one possibility.

Also, with respect to China, I would say that we have had an extensive dialogue with officials from that country with respect to the situation in Darfur. The president has even spoken to the premier of China with respect to our concern about Darfur.

And I think that we have an agreement, an understanding with China about the importance of impressing upon the authorities of the Sudan the importance of them coming into compliance with the wishes and demands of both the international community and the people in Darfur themselves, who are so tragically affected by this situation.

GWEN IFILL: Let me get that clear. You have an understanding with China that they, too, would impose sanctions?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: No, I didn't mean to imply that they've agreed to sanctions. What I meant to say is that they appreciate the importance of this situation and they, along with us, have worked hard to impress upon the government of Sudan the importance of Sudan accommodating the wishes and demands of the international community in regard to Darfur.

GWEN IFILL: And in regards to the United Nations, with the new secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, is the one who asked for a little bit of extra time to make a diplomatic solution work, do you sense that there is any appetite at the United Nations for sanctions or for a new resolution?

JOHN NEGROPONTE: Well, I think we'll have to wait and see. I think that, certainly, the members of the Security Council and the secretary general have all agreed already that there should be this three-phase package with respect to international peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.

That is to say, a light support package, which is already in the process of being implemented; a heavy support package, which would be sort of enabling elements, designed to buttress the African Union forces that are already there; and then, the African Union-United Nations hybrid group, which would be the 10,000 or 12,000, 10,000 or so additional peacekeepers, who we would visualize sending to the Darfur area on an urgent basis.

I think the important point to stress here is that this is a package. It's a package that needs to be dealt with as a whole. And what we are seeking at the moment is for Sudan to agree, not only to the first and second elements of the package, but to all three.

Darfur: SLM-AW Accuses Khartoum of Recruiting Militia From Niger

From the Sudan Tribune

The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement accused today Sudanese government of recruiting Arab tribes from Niger to constitute new militia in worn torn Darfur region.

The leader of the rebel SLM, Abdelwahid al-Nur on Monday accused Khartoum of recruiting 17 thousand of Mahamid Arabs of Niger. Al-Nur said Darfur Arab tribes refuse more and more to participate in Sudanese government plans in Darfur.

He further said that SLM engaged intense dialogue with Arab tribes in Darfur and several reconciliation meetings were organized by the SLM.

He said the Mahamid are now settled in different parts of Darfur form Habila area area in west Darfur to Dab Nirah , Bendfi, Jumaiza and wadi Salih.

In October 2006, the Niger’s government suspended deportation of nomadic Arabs, who fled warfare and drought in neighboring Chad during the 1980s.

Abdelwahid said Khartoum in doing so, continues to carry its initial design to re-define the demographic reality of the region. He added that National Congress government wants to generalize the chaos in the country by adopting the priciple of “War of all against all”.

The rebel leader reiterated that deployment of international troops is only can secure lives of the IDPs and the refugees. He further said they will not engage peace talks with Khartoum as long as Darfur civilians are not protected.

Darfur: PACs Tied to Sudan Gave $580k

From The Hill

Corporations targeted for doing business with the Sudanese government, which faces sanctions for its complicity in the Darfur genocide, gave more than $580,000 to congressional candidates during the 2006 cycle through the political action committees (PACs) of their U.S. subsidiaries, according to federal disclosures.

Sudan-linked PACs sent contributions to 13 House members who backed a plan by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) requiring public companies to reveal the nature of their ties to Sudan and barring them from federal contracts until the ties were severed. Eight of those House members, all Democrats, received contributions from Sudan-linked PACs within two weeks of signing on to Lee’s bill last year.

The timing and beneficiaries of the PAC contributions reveal the discordant reality of congressional fundraising, in which most lawmakers rely on professional fundraisers or campaign aides to field donations, often knowing little about the money’s origins. Several congressional offices were surprised when informed that five PACs of Sudan-linked multinational corporations were active in last year’s midterms, although at least two of the companies have since divested themselves from the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

“This is something we should all be aware of,” said a senior aide to one of the lawmakers who unknowingly received contributions. “Any information we can get about companies and PACs that have an interest in Sudan would be good.”

Another aide to a lawmaker receiving one of the contributions said his boss had no idea that the PAC donation was linked to a corporation operating in Sudan but is relieved that the business has since divested. The office plans to secure a list of corporations still linked to the Bashir government to check future contributions.

The five PACs are registered to the U.S. offices of Siemens AG, ABB, Areva Group, Alcatel and Rolls-Royce, which allows corporations with international parents to donate to federal candidates. Siemens and ABB announced plans earlier this year to withdraw from Sudan, and Rolls-Royce relented to pressure from divestment advocates last week.

Nonetheless, the companies’ PACs were active givers during the fall of 2006, when Lee released her first Sudan divestment measure. Among those receiving donations from Siemens days or weeks within cosponsoring the divestment bill were Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Government Reform and Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

“Obviously, the contributions haven’t impacted the position of those members in terms of supporting divestment as a powerful tool to continue to increase the pressure on the Khartoum regime to end the genocide in Darfur,” Lee said through a spokesman.

Lee’s divestment legislation played a central role in Siemens’s and ABB’s pullouts from Sudan, her spokesman added.
Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, said the giving patterns of the Sudan-linked PACs demonstrate that donations rarely are tracked to their sources, unless lawmakers are vigilant in the face of public scrutiny — as was the case with last year’s flurry of returned checks to Jack Abramoff.

“There is the notion that, ‘Hey, I can take your money but not have to agree with you,’” McGehee said. “But this money gives [the Sudan-linked corporations] a seat at the table. It’s not whether you buy a vote. This is whether or not you have access.”

The potential inconsistency of the PAC giving in light of lawmakers’ public support for Sudan divestment was not lost on Steven Weissman, associate director at the Campaign Finance Institute.

“It would seem hypocritical for them to say that states should divest from these companies, and at the same time they’re accepting contributions from these companies’ PACs,” Weissman said. “They have a responsibility to check into these contributions.”

The divestment push aims to choke the financial support that the Sudanese regime is believed to be providing to the “janjaweed” militias that have left a trail of destruction and murder through the Darfur region of western Sudan.
Hundreds of thousands have perished at the hands of the janjaweed in what the Bush administration has called a genocidal campaign.

One person familiar with the Lee bill said more awareness of the source of PAC contributions could prove beneficial: “It is crucial that divestment legislation move forward, and identifying these donations may be an opportunity for members to directly engage some of the companies doing business in Sudan.”

The Genocide Intervention Network (GIN), a leading participant in the effort, said the presence of 100 cosponsors on this year’s Lee divestment bill is worth hailing regardless of the PAC contributions that several of those members received.

“In terms of the mission of the divestment movement, this shows how important it is to be responsible as a fiscal citizen — be it on the state level, for your own individual investments, or even the money you receive from contributors,” GIN advocacy associate Allyson Neville said.

A Sudan researcher and analyst at Smith College, professor Eric Reeves, connected the PAC giving to K Street’s resistance to divestment rather than any attempt to influence lawmakers.

Corporate complicity in Darfur “doesn’t matter to a number of business interest groups,” Reeves said. “They want business as usual, no matter what the human costs. … It’s going to take a lot of nerve [for Congress] to oppose this legislation.”

Darfur: IOC Sidesteps Human Rights Issues

From the AP

The IOC will not pressure China on human rights or other political issues in the leadup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments as to how they ought to behave," Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC's coordination commission for the Beijing Game, said Wednesday.

Verbruggen was asked specifically about calls for a boycott to pressure China to do more to stop the violence in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

"We don't want to be, as the IOC, involved in any political issues," he said. "It's not our task. We are here for organizing the Games."

Last month, French presidential candidate Francois Bayrou proposed his country's athletes stay away from the Beijing Games in an effort to make China lean on Sudan's government. American actress Mia Farrow also has called on corporate sponsors of the Beijing Games to pressure China to do more to help stop the violence in Darfur.

China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil and sells it weapons and military aircraft.

"Obviously everybody would like to see a swift resolution to those kind of conflicts," Verbruggen said. "We can only hope that those problems are solved as soon as possible."

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge let Verbruggen answer most of the tough questions centering on human rights and the route for the torch relay. But Rogge maintained the games would be a "force for good" in China.

"We believe that the Olympic Games will have definitely a positive, lasting effect on the Chinese society," Rogge said at a news conference on the first day of IOC executive board meetings in Beijing.

Asked if sponsors of the Olympics were concerned about human rights issues in China, Rogge replied: "I think I can say the sponsors are totally in tune with the position of the International Olympic Committee on a wide array of issues."

Verbruggen repeated several times that the Olympics would be good for China.

"We feel that bringing the games here — in general without going into detail on any political issue — will be beneficial for the social and economic development of this country," he said. "Would any political situation be better here were we not coming with the Games to China? Certainly that would not be the case."

Darfur: John Edwards' Plan

From John Edwards, related to this post from Monday - via Tapped

Conflict in Darfur, which is in Western Sudan, broke out in 2003 when small farmers took up arms to fight for a greater share of resources. The conflict turned into genocide when the Sudanese government backed the Janjaweed militia, which has brutally raped, tortured and killed 400,000 people and driven two and a half million people from their homes. In addition, the violence and chaos is spreading to neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.

African Union peacekeeping troops stationed in Darfur have been valiant in a difficult cause. But these troops, which number just 7,000, have been unable to protect civilians or enforce a 2004 ceasefire. In the meantime, security has deteriorated dramatically.

Last November, President Bashir of Sudan finally agreed to allow U.N. peacekeeping troops in the country, which would be deployed in two phases. The first phase was about 200 advisors, who are now in the country. The second was 3,000 peacekeeping forces, who would work with the African Union troops. The 3,000 U.N. troops are the critical link in the chain, and the UN is not moving quickly enough to provide them.

John Edwards believe we should work with NATO, one of the world's most effective security organizations, to make sure the UN process will be as rapid, tough, and effective as possible. We saw the success of NATO in the Kosovo operation under President Clinton. Its member countries have some of the most accomplished militaries in the world. Edwards called for a combination of U.S. and NATO actions to accelerate the peacekeeping process and the genocide.

* President Bush should reverse his decision to delay new American sanctions on 29 companies owned or controlled by the Sudanese government.

* American airlift capabilities, logistical support and intelligence operations should be deployed to assist U.N. and African Union peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.

* The U.S. should convene within the next 30 days an emergency meeting of NATO's leadership to act on Darfur.

* NATO countries should support the deployment of U.N. troops with logistical, operational, and financial support.

* NATO should establish a no-fly zone over the region, to cut off supplies to the brutal Janjaweed militias and end Sudanese bombing of civilians in Darfur.

* NATO member countries should impose new multilateral sanctions on the Sudanese government as well as individuals complicit in the genocide.

Uganda: ICC Must Punish LRA

From Reuters

War criminals from Uganda's 20-year civil conflict must be punished if peace is to last, a leading human rights watchdog said on Wednesday on the eve of a resumption of talks with rebels.

The government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are due to resume negotiations on Thursday in a push to end one of Africa's most brutal wars, which has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.7 million more to squalid camps.

Fugitive guerrilla leader Joseph Kony and four other commanders are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Kony has said he will never sign a peace deal until the ICC charges are dropped -- the biggest sticking point in the talks.

"Prosecutions ... are crucial to achieving a sustainable peace in northern Uganda," Human Rights Watch said in a statement. "The LRA leadership has been responsible for shocking crimes against civilians."

It said besides being a legal obligation, the arrest and trial of LRA leaders by the world court would encourage peace and respect for human rights around the world.

"Such prosecutions send the message ... to would-be perpetrators that no one is above the law," the statement said.

Despite the stand-off over the ICC indictments, both sides agreed this month to extend an truce signed in August until June while they resume talks in Juba, southern Sudan.

Campaigners in Uganda see the ICC indictments as an obstacle to a final peace deal, and want them scrapped.

"The ICC is ... the make or break issue," Norbert Mao, a northern politician and peace campaigner, told Reuters. "They are being disruptive to the peace process."

Traditional leaders from Kony's own Acholi tribe -- who have borne the brunt of attacks by rebels notorious for mutilating victims and abducting children to use as soldiers -- want Kony and his henchmen to undergo a reconciliation ritual instead.

"Mato Oput" justice involves a murderer facing relatives of the victim and admitting his crime before both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep's blood.

Others feel that would be letting Kony off too lightly.

"Prosecutions ... need to involve fair trials and penalties that reflect the gravity of the crimes committed. Anything less would be justice denied," Human Rights Watch said.

Uganda: Restarting Talks Would Reassure Displaced

From IRIN

The resumption of talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) could boost hopes that most internally displaced people in northern Uganda can safely return home, local leaders said.

"The collapse of the talks in December worried everybody, but the move to resume talks is seen as the best chance to end the suffering the people have endured," Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu said on Wednesday.

The talks, which aim to end more than two decades of civil war in northern Uganda, are scheduled to resume on Thursday in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.

According to Odama, uncertainty had reigned in northern Uganda since the talks hit a stalemate in December, after the rebels walked out, saying they had lost confidence in the mediators. They also demanded a new venue and a mediation team before they would return to the table.

"Both parties should return to the negotiation table with a degree of humility and a love for the country and the people who are suffering in the camps where children lack what other children have," the Archbishop added. "It is a responsibility of those negotiating to end that suffering."

The agreement to resume talks was reached after meetings with a United Nations envoy, former Mozambique President, Joaquim Chissano, Ugandan government officials and the LRA.

The Ugandan delegation spokesman Maj Felix Kulaije said his government team would try to conclude the parley "expeditiously".

Ayena Odongo, a lawyer based in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and one of the LRA delegation, said: "Our concerns were addressed during the meeting with President Joaquim Chissano and we hope [the talks] will be smooth this time," he added.

More than a million people displaced by the war continue to live in camps where they mainly depend on relief agencies. Hundreds of thousands of others have, however, returned to their villages, after a lull in fighting in the past few months.

"The people here who have endured the suffering expect that this time the delegations will take the talks to a logical conclusion so that they can return to their homes," Odama said.

According to Ugandan officials, the next round of talks will address political solutions to the situation in northern Uganda and issues that include the development of the north.

The two sides will also handle accountability and justice, specifically the indictments of five LRA leaders, including Joseph Kony, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The rebels have demanded the indictments be withdrawn before they sign a final agreement.

Genocide: Name Calling

A piece by Christopher Beam in The New Republic

In recent years, President Bush has had no trouble using the word "genocide"--first in reference to Saddam, then to the killings in Darfur. The word connotes a moral imperative to intervene, perhaps because of its reductio ad Hitlerum quality--how can you stand idly by during a genocide? But, when discussing the million-plus Armenians killed in Turkey between 1915 and 1923, President Bush, like President Clinton before him, has avoided the word entirely.

That's because, unlike other questions of who killed whom that the United States has answered over last decades (Iraq, twice in the Balkans, Rwanda, Sudan), there is a strategic reason to stay mum about the Armenians: Turkey, a NATO ally of 50 years and a partner in the war on terrorism, would get mad. According to Ankara, only 300,000 died, and only because its government suppressed uprisings provoked by the crumbling Ottoman Empire. (Samantha Power dedicated the first chapter of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide to debunking this myth.) The Turks recognize the dispute and want "further study," but in the meantime, they really don't want to be known as perpetrators of genocide.

For years, U.S. presidents have obliged--a tradition Bush continued yesterday on the weirdly-named "National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man," when, in a tribute to Armenians, he conspicuously omitted the word "genocide." But that may soon change. The House had been planning to mark April 24 by passing a resolution calling the murder of Armenians during and after World War I genocide. The measure, co-authored by California Republican George Radanovich and co-sponsored by 190 House members, is just the latest of many genocide bills supported by Armenian-American groups. But, unlike the others, this one has a good chance of passing. It has bipartisan support, and its language is purely symbolic: no restitutions, no requests for apology. Just a statement urging the president to call the killings genocide.

This has frightened Ankara, where it is a crime to "insult Turkishness" (apparently there's no greater insult than applying that label to killings perpetrated almost a century ago by the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk). In the past week, Turks have been frantically lobbying members of Congress, urging them to oppose the resolution. The Embassy of Turkey took out a full-page ad in Monday's New York Times urging Congress "to examine history, not legislate it." And they are threatening to hamper U.S. efforts in Iraq.

We know they did something wrong, but they won't let us say it. The reasons for and against using the term "genocide" are perfectly clear: morally, we should; strategically, we shouldn't. This choice--between retaining a key ally and recognizing a distant crime--has become Washington's purest test of realism versus idealism.

Genocide: Presidential Message Honoring Memory of 1.5 Million Armenian Lives Lost During Ottoman Empire

No mention of the word "genocide" - From the White House

Each year on this day, we pause to remember the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, when as many as 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, many of them victims of mass killings and forced exile. I join my fellow Americans and Armenian people around the world in commemorating this tragedy and honoring the memory of the innocent lives that were taken. The world must never forget this painful chapter of its history.

All who cherish freedom and value the sanctity of human life look back on these horrific events in sorrow and disbelief. Many of those who survived were forced from their ancestral home and spread across the globe. Yet, in the midst of this terrible struggle, the world witnessed the indomitable spirit and character of the Armenian people. Many of the brave survivors came to America, where they have preserved a deep connection with their history and culture. Generations of Armenians in the United States have enriched our country and inspired us with their courage and conviction.

Today, we remember the past and also look forward to a brighter future. We commend the individuals in Armenia and Turkey who are working to normalize the relationship between their two countries. A sincere and open examination of the historic events of the late-Ottoman period is an essential part of this process. The United States supports and encourages those in both countries who are working to build a shared understanding of history as a basis for a more hopeful future.

We value the strong and vibrant ties between the United States and Armenia. Our Nation is grateful for Armenia's contributions to the war on terror, particularly for its efforts to help build a peaceful and democratic Iraq. The United States remains committed to working with Armenia and Azerbaijan to promote a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We are also working to promote democratic and economic reform in Armenia that will advance the cause of freedom and justice.

Laura and I express our deepest condolences to Armenian people around the world on this solemn day of remembrance. We stand together in our determination to build a more peaceful, more prosperous, and more just world.

Genocide: Wexler Blasted for Opposing Armenian Resolution

From the Palm Beach Post

It's an issue that is splitting the Jewish community and has entered a South Florida congressional primary: How can a Jewish congressman not recognize the 1915 massacre of possibly 1.5 million Armenian civilians as genocide? The issue was raised Tuesday - recognized by many countries as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day - by Ben Graber, a former state representative and former Broward County mayor who plans to challenge U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Delray Beach in next year's Democratic primary.

Graber, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, called Wexler an "embarrassment" to the Jewish community for opposing a resolution in the House of Representatives that recognizes the killing and deportation of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who is Jewish. It has been bottled up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee whose chairman is Rep. Tom Lantos - also a Democrat from California who is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.

Wexler, who is also Jewish and serves as co-chairman of the Congressional Turkey Caucus, said there is debate among historians about whether the killings should be classified as genocide.

"There is no question that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were massacred, that is not debatable," Wexler said, noting that the killings took place during World War I when the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire sided with the czarist Russians.

"The only question before the Congress is does the Congress have the expertise to make that historical conclusion" that the killings were genocide.

Wexler said his position is in line with that adopted by most major Jewish organizations - including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, U.S. presidents of both parties, and the Israeli government.

He said it would be unfair to describe his position or those taken by the Jewish organizations or Israel as being "deniers" of genocide.

But Graber said the record is clear. He cited reports and comments from leading figures of the time, including then-U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., who later wrote: "when the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact." David Shneer, director of the University of Denver Center for Judaic Studies and an associate professor of history, said, "serious historians of the history of 20th Century genocide would agree that the Armenian genocide happened. Those who dispute that it happened tend to have some type of political agenda." Wexler said he is a strong supporter of efforts by the Bush administration and some international leaders to convene a commission of experts - including representatives from Armenia and Turkey - to examine the historical record and seek a resolution to the issue.

DRC: Civilians Fleeing Fighting Forced into Makeshift Camps

From IRIN

Civilians fleeing fighting between Congolese government troops and rebel militias in North Kivu Province have been forced to shelter in makeshift camps 100km from Goma town, aid workers said.

Thousands of others are living in the bush, hiding during the day and going to their fields at night.

Humanitarian sources said thousands of people had been displaced since clashes between the two groups started in January, including more than 64,000 who fled their homes in North Kivu alone over recent weeks.

"The deployment of the mixed brigades and repeated clashes between the army and armed groups have caused the displacement of more than 100,000 people in this area," said Andrew Zadel, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Goma.

The latest fighting flared up on Tuesday as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) troops launched an offensive against Rwandan rebels hiding in the east of the vast country.

"The mixed brigades of the army [FARDC] launched a general counter-offensive in North Kivu against the positions of Rwandan fighters of the Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and of a group called Rasta," Col Delphin Kahindi, the army commander in Goma military region, Orientale Province, told IRIN.

The Forces armées de la république démocratique du Congo (FARDC) is an integrated national army, comprising former rebel fighters, militias and soldiers from the former national army. Human rights groups, however, say the soldiers are responsible for human rights violations in Orientale Province.

The Rwandan fighters are accused of perpetrating the 1994 genocide in their home country, before fleeing to hide in DRC. Some are using children to fight for them, according to human rights groups.

"The objective of the operation is to push back the rebels towards zones where nobody lives and to secure roads and villages," said Kahindi. The rebels, he added, were already being forced back towards the Virunga national park.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed more food to 68,000 displaced people in North Kivu and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) plans to take up reports by victims that armed groups have committed serious human rights abuses with the Congolese military and local authorities.

"The latest fighting underlines the need for a strong humanitarian presence in eastern Congo," said Charles Vincent, WFP country director in the DRC.

A spokesman for the UN Mission in Congo, Maj Gen Gabriel de Brosses, said 10,000 persons had fled Walungu region in the past three days because of the counterattack against the FDLR and the Rasta. "People are awaiting the end of the military operations; they will then be able to return to their villages," he said.

Somalia: Mogadishu War Enters Second Week

From Reuters

Shelling and machine-gun fire shook the Somali capital Mogadishu on Wednesday for an eighth day as residents continued to flee a government offensive to crush Islamist insurgents and clan militia.

Residents said Wednesday's fighting was lighter than previous days, as allied Somali-Ethiopian forces take on rebels frustrating the interim government's bid to restore central rule in the Horn of Africa nation for the first time in 16 years.

"The shelling is still going on, but it is less heavy than yesterday. But it is still too dangerous to venture out," said one resident who asked not to be named.

Local residents and human rights workers say nearly 300 people have been killed in a week of fighting that has focused on an Islamist stronghold in the north of the city.

As the battles intensified on Tuesday, a car bomb killed four civilians in central Mogadishu -- decapitating one of them -- and a suicide attacker struck at Ethiopian troops at a base in a small farming town on the western outskirts of the capital.

An Islamist militant group claimed responsibility for both.

The group, calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement in Somalia, said a Kenyan member named Othman Otibo carried out the suicide bombing at an Ethiopian military base in Afgooye, a small town 30 km (19 miles) west of Mogadishu.

"Following this blessed martyrdom operation, a seven-minute clash broke out between the victorious lions of unification (Islam) and the remnants of the...defeated Ethiopians," it said in an Internet statement posted on Wednesday.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.

But it was on a Web site used by Islamist militants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

The United States, which diplomats say gave tacit backing to Ethiopia's involvement in Somalia, has urged all sides to reach a truce, expressing concern about a growing humanitarian crisis.

On Tuesday, Ethiopian Prime Minister said operations to defeat Islamist hardliners were going well, and that he expected it would take no more than "a week or two" to clear the city.

He disputed the casualty figures, saying "so-called" rights groups were fronts for the Islamists.

According to the United Nations, more than 321,000 people have fled Mogadishu in recent weeks, many sleeping in the open or under trees. It has warned of a looming health disaster.

Darfur: Refugees Plead for U.N. Help

From the AP

Refugee leaders pleaded with the visiting U.N. refugee chief Tuesday for better security as he toured camps around this increasingly lawless regional capital, where feared janjaweed militiamen roam freely and have infiltrated the police forces.

The fighters, blamed for widespread atrocities in Darfur, rode with police and army units in armed pickup trucks through el-Geneina as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres met with local authorities.

Gunshots and clashes from the janjaweed occur almost daily, residents say. "The last killing happened five days ago," said Ibrahim Harun. "A janjaweed killed my neighbor because he wanted his cell phone."

The situation is even worse in neighboring refugee camps, tribal leaders told the UNHCR chief.

"They shoot at us day and night," said sheik Ibrahim Ali, a traditional leader of the Massalit tribe, who make up most of the 31,000 refugees from other parts of Darfur crowded into the Krinding camp on the outskirts of el-Geneina.

"Nobody chases or arrests any of the attackers," he told Guterres. "What we need is for the U.N. to send peacekeepers so that we can go back to our villages."

Another sheik, Mohammed Adam, said attacks were reported to the African Union, which has 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, some of them in a compound next to el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. "But nothing changes," he told Guterres.

Residents and international workers in the area estimated that over half of government forces here are now infiltrated by militiamen. The Khartoum government denies supporting the janjaweed and calls them bandits they cannot control.

A Sudanese official in El-Geneina acknowledged the problem but said the local government had no control over the militiamen's activities. "The security services don't even inform us when the janjaweed come in town," said the official, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made refugees in Darfur since 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-led Sudanese government, accusing it of neglect and discrimination. The government is accused of arming the janjaweed as a counterinsurgency tactic, and the militiamen are blamed for widespread rapes and killings against Darfur civilians.

Guterres was on a two-day visit as the UNHCR prepares to bolster its operations in West Darfur, one of three provinces that make up Darfur.

He urged the refugee leaders to endorse the Darfur Peace Agreement, which was signed last year between the government and one rebel group. But other rebel factions and refugees have rejected the deal, saying it is insufficient.

"A bad peace is better than a good war," Guterres told the refugees.

After five months of stalling, Sudan agreed earlier in April to let 3,000 United Nations peacekeepers reinforce the AU in Darfur, but most observers say so small a force cannot provide a lasting solution.

Several rebel leaders have hinted new negotiations could open soon, and government officials now say the army will suspend attacks for two months.

However, the AU confirmed Tuesday that government aircraft had bombed a North Darfur village last week where rebels were meeting to discuss peace talks.

Darfur: Peacekeepers Cannot Secure Peace, Says UNHCR

From Reuters

Even a force of 100,000 peacekeepers could not secure peace in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the head of the U.N refugee agency said on Tuesday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said only a comprehensive political solution to the crisis would end the four-year-old conflict in Darfur, in which the United Nations say around 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million people displaced.

"Without peace, there is no miracle. No security force will be able to guarantee security in the whole of Darfur. Darfur is very big," he said during a meeting with the so-called sheikhs of the displaced people at the Krinding Camp in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.

"Even if you have 100,000 policemen in Darfur, they will not be able to cover the whole territory," he told the men, who gathered inside a small hut.

The Krinding camp is home to more than 30,000 people who live in small huts and complain about deteriorating security, abject poverty and the lack of educational services.

Sudan recently agreed to a "heavy support package" for the African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, to include some 3,500 military and police personnel. Khartoum, however, has rejected a U.N. demand to let in around 20,000 peacekeepers.

U.S. President George W. Bush warned Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week he had one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or the United States would impose sanctions and consider other punitive options. Sudan said it would not respond to "Western blackmail".

Guterres, speaking later in an interview with Reuters, said: "There needs to be a political solution first. Of course we need peacekeepers, but peacekeepers can do only so much if there is no peace. In any humanitarian crisis, there is always behind it a political problem. If you don't solve the political problem, you will never solve the crisis."

A 2006 peace agreement between the government and one rebel group has failed to stop the violence in Darfur. Eritrea, the Red Sea state that has friendly relations with Sudan, has said it is trying to bring other rebel groups to the negotiating table with the government.

These efforts, however, have made little progress. Rebel groups want to renegotiate the 2006 peace deal, a demand that Khartoum rejects.

Guterres arrived in Darfur one day after several international aid agencies said they were temporarily halting their work in the town of Um Dukhun because of worsening security in the area, which lies in West Darfur state near the border with Chad.

The agencies, which include Britain's Oxfam, Save the Children Spain and U.S.-based Mercy Corps, said their decision would disrupt the services to around 100,000 people in the town and surrounding rural areas.

Gutteres said UNHCR was planning to increase its presence in West Darfur despite the security risk.

Asked about the decision of the humanitarian agencies, he said: "There are regions in Darfur in which access is relatively easy, regions in which access is limited and difficult and regions where there is no access at all."

Sudanese Presidential Adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa said on Monday that security in Darfur was improving. The acting governor of West Darfur, Abdallah Khamis, said on Tuesday 80 percent of the state was stable.

"We hope that this land becomes one of the paradises in which people will live until Judgment Day," he told Guterres and the visiting U.N. delegation." .

Darfur: U.S. Pushes for Another UN Resolution

From the AP

The United States is seeking to use a U.N. resolution that would extend the 12,700-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan to press for a joint new U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in conflict-wracked Darfur.

But the U.S. draft is likely to face difficulties from Security Council members who want to keep the peacekeeping operation in the south separate from efforts to create a joint U.N.-AU force in Darfur.

The draft Security Council resolution circulated by the U.S. on Monday would extend the U.N. force monitoring a 2005 peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south for just three months — until July 31.

U.S. diplomats said the proposed short extension of the mandate was designed to keep up pressure on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to approve a U.N.-AU "hybrid" force to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur, a vast western region about the size of France.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters he hadn't studied the text but said: "At first glance there were some issues raised which do not have to be in the draft resolution."

Council experts are expected to discuss the draft this week.

The U.S. draft expresses "grave concern" at the continued deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Darfur and "the increasing effects of the violence" in neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and 2.5 million driven from their homes since fighting began between ethnically African rebels and the Arab-dominated central government in 2003, and the conflict has spilled into the two neighboring countries.

The U.S. draft calls on all parties to implement a "heavy support package" with 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with six attack helicopters which al-Bashir recently agreed to deploy to Darfur to beef up the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force on the ground.

It would urge the transition from an AU to a joint U.N.-AU force and express the council's "intention" to establish the hybrid force. It would authorize the force "to protect effectively civilians under threat of physical violence and prevent attacks against civilians" and to help ensure delivery of humanitarian aid — and authorize U.N. "command and control structures" and financial management of the hybrid force.

The proposed U.S. resolution would also strongly back efforts by U.N. and AU envoys to get all rebel groups to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement, which has so far been signed only by the government and one rebel group. It would authorize U.N. assistance to implement the peace agreement.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the Security Council to allow more time for diplomacy before considering whether to impose further economic and military sanctions on Sudan over the situation in Darfur.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said the United States and Britain have drafted a new sanctions resolution which is "95 percent cooked" and are consulting other council members.

Whether or when the draft resolution is introduced depends on whether Sudan agrees to the hybrid force, he said.

As for the north-south agreement, which ended a conflict in which some 2 million people died, the U.S. draft expresses "the intention to renew it for further periods" beyond July 31.

From Reuters

The United States introduced a U.N. Security Council resolution on Monday that calls for a large U.N. force in western Sudan's Darfur region to protect civilians threatened by violence.

But the draft resolution ran into opposition because it did not focus solely on renewing the mandate for the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Sudan, where troops are helping to keep a truce after two decades of civil war.

The U.S. draft also raised opposition because it calls for a three-month extension for the southern Sudan force instead of the usual six months recommended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"Lots of members supported what the secretary-general had recommended," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, this month's council president, told reporters.

Sudan recently agreed to a "heavy support package" for the African Union troops in Darfur that includes some 3,500 military and police personnel. But Khartoum has not approved a "hybrid" U.N.-AU force of more than 20,000 troops and police, which the council first authorized last August.

Still, the U.S. draft expresses the council's "intention" to establish a hybrid force in Darfur where at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.3 million made homeless in four-year battles among African rebel groups, the Arab-dominated government and militia who back it.

The draft also asked the secretary-general to ensure the hybrid force protects "civilians under threat of physical violence," prevent attacks against civilians and provides U.N. command and control structures.

It also says the United Nations should put into place urgently the support packages for the African Union.

But South Africa's U.N. ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, immediately objected, saying, "We can't mix everything in the same resolution." Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin agreed.

Britain and the United States have been drawing up a sanctions resolution if Sudan continues to balk at U.N. demands, although no date has been set for its introduction.

"We're discussing it with colleagues and progressively broadening the discussions," Jones Parry said. But he said much happened on the ground and much depended on Khartoum's agreement for a large force.

"Do we get agreement on the hybrid, are we moving forward or are we playing games?" Jones Parry asked.

"Events will determine this but we are under no illusions we are ready to put down a text," he said. "We have the text, which is 95 percent cooked but we are doing our colleagues the courtesy of consulting with them at this stage."

Among the sanctions under consideration are an arms embargo for the entire country and adding names to a previous list of four individuals from the government, militia and rebels under travel and financial bans. Companies and institutions might also be included.

The United States and Britain also want monitors at airports in Sudan, preferably from the African Union. A total flight ban has not been included.

Darfur: Sudanese Envoy Says Crisis is Complex

From the Deseret News

Don't believe everything the media and the Internet tell you about what's happening in Darfur, the Sudanese ambassador to the United States told students at the University of Utah Monday.

Media reports are superficial and the situation is complex, Ambassador John Ukec Lueth Ukec told a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.

In the face of growing rage in the United States about the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan, Ukec defended his government's position that the crisis can't be resolved until Darfurian rebel factions lay down their arms. Although an estimated 400,000 Darfurians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the Darfur conflict began four years ago, the ambassador said that "My government doesn't agree that what's going on in Darfur is a genocide." He also argued that it would be a mistake to bring in U.N. peacekeepers.

The unpopularity of Ukec's positions in some quarters was underscored by the fact that a bodyguard stood by his side during most of his talk. When asked about the bodyguard during a question-and-answer session, however, Ukec said the security was not his idea.

As ambassador, Ukec represents the Sudanese government, currently run by fundamentalist Muslims in North Sudan. He himself is a Christian from South Sudan, became a soldier defending the South at age 15, and has spent two decades studying and teaching in the United States. That makes Ukec a man caught in the middle.

Ukec is part of the Government of National Unity, formed when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended 21 years of fighting between North and South Sudan. The situation in Darfur is a separate situation, but Ukec is worried that the CPA will be in jeopardy if governments such as the United States pressure the Sudanese government in Khartoum to allow United Nations peacekeepers into the country.

Without the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Ukec said, "Khartoum would have cut off my head a long time ago."

The Government of National Unity is currently dominated by the party of President Omar al-Bashir. But the presence of Southern Sudanese such as himself, Ukec argued, "mitigates the extremity of the situation. ... The best thing is that we are allies of the marginalized."

Peace is a process, he said. "Slowly, slowly, these guys are going to fall under us." He predicted that by early 2009, "we will have a democratic government in Khartoum."

Ukec argued that the 400,000 dead and 2 million displaced in Darfur were the result of old hostilities between farmers and herders. He denied that the Bashir government is continuing to arm the marauding Arab Janjaweed militia, saying it was a mistake to have given them guns in the first place. The government will not be able to disarm them, he said. He made no mention of reports that Darfurians have also been killed by government-supplied helicopters and bombers.

The Government of National Unity is "completely against" what is happening in Darfur, he said. "We want to clear up the mess."

His arguments failed to satisfy students such as Briawna Howard, who said the militia are still being supplied with arms by the government in Khartoum. In addition, she said, "nothing is being done to protect the internally displaced people in Darfur, or the Darfur refugees in Chad.

"A Darfurian dies every five minutes," Howard said. "Thirty died in the hour we were in that room." Ukec, she said, "is trying to downplay the magnitude."

Darfur: China on Diplomatic Highwire

From Reuters

Buffeted by an international outcry over turmoil in Darfur, China has wavered between offering to work closer with the West and guarding ties with Sudan, highlighting how nervously Beijing handles its rising prominence.

China buys much of Sudan's oil and as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council can stymie proposals to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, the ethnically mixed region of west Sudan where government-linked militia have been fighting rebels, leaving settlements wasted and some 2.5 million refugees.

Western rights campaigners have accused Beijing of not pressing Sudan enough to end the violence that has killed about 200,000 according to the U.N. China's recent burst of high-profile diplomacy suggests it wants to fight such claims.

"There's clearly been a shift since last year in how China deals with Darfur and how Washington deals with China on the issue," said Andrew Small, a researcher with the German Marshall Fund in Brussels who follows Chinese foreign policy.

That fresh urgency, however, has been offset by worries about Western motives and a desire to protect China's big stake in Sudan, leaving Beijing straddling a diplomatic highwire between Western pressure and Sudanese resistance.

"They're trying to hold off even stronger action from Washington and Brussels. It's also a holding operation," Small said of China's moves.

China's steps over Darfur leaves little doubt that Beijing is worried that further strife there could stain its image, endanger investments and strain ties with Washington.

"The Chinese are getting concerned about the scrutiny they're under," said Larry Rossin, a former U.S. and U.N. diplomat who now represents the Save Darfur Coalition, an umbrella group.

China's special envoy to Sudan, Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun, discussed the crisis with U.S. officials in March and a month later visited refugees in Darfur.

When Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff visited Beijing this month, China pointedly announced that People's Liberation Army commanders discussed Darfur.

China has publicly urged Khartoum to allow implementation of the "Annan" plan that Beijing helped broker last November. The plan entails a hybrid peacekeeping force combining U.N. troops with African Union forces already in Darfur. Overstretched AU troops have failed to stop much bloodshed.

China's calls appeared to "play some role" in Sudan's announcement last week that it would accept the first stages of the hybrid U.N.-AU force plan, said Rossin.

China's movement on Darfur came after calls from activists to shame Beijing into cutting support for Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by boycotting the 2008 Olympics.

Such calls have stung, said Xu Weizhong, an expert on Africa at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government thinktank.

But Beijing's increased activism predated the boycott calls, and has also been driven by closer dialogue with Washington, said Stephen Morrison, an expert on Africa at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Talk between Washington and Beijing has included a possible Chinese contribution to the U.N. force, he said. Such a presence may allay some of Sudan's suspicions about its role.

"China now has the sense that Washington is at least listening to its concerns about the effects of international pressure on Sudan," said Xu. "I think China has also become more relaxed about the United States' thinking."

But Beijing has also stressed that it does not want to alienate Bashir and has balanced gentle pressure over Darfur with reassuring gestures to Sudan.

When Zhai visited the refugee camp, Chinese press reports lauded conditions there.

"The words that Zhai Jun said when he was in Darfur were the very same words that I heard when I was in the governor's office in southern Darfur. He was mouthing Sudan's line," said Rossin.

For China, the stakes are economic as well as diplomatic.

So far this year, Sudan has been China's sixth-biggest foreign oil supplier and it has been the biggest target for Chinese investment in Africa.

In the first three months of this year, China shipped 2.6 million tons of crude from Sudan, up 396 percent on the same period last year, when shipments were unusually low.

But China's diplomatic highwire act may become tenuous if Bashir continues fending off the Annan peace plan.

U.S. President George Bush warned Bashir last week that he had one last chance to avoid sanctions by allowing a full joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force. Beijing has repeatedly said it opposes sanctions.

Ultimately, though, China may abstain from but not back a Security Council vote imposing some sanctions if Bashir continues to hold off implementing the peace plan, Morrison said.

"Now the Chinese are in a bind," Rossin said. "I think it's going to be more difficult for them to veto, but they'll try to water down any resolution anyway."

Uganda: ICC Says LRA Rearming

From VOA - via POTP

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) says Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is rearming, regrouping and still holding abducted children. ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says pursuing arrest warrants against the rebels’ top leadership will help sustain the peace process and offer justice to the victims of war crimes the rebels have allegedly committed. But the LRA dismissed the chief prosecutor’s pronouncements and accused him of backing the Ugandan government.

David Matsanga is technical advisor for the rebels on ICC matters. From the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, he tells the Voice of America that the chief prosecutor’s pronouncement is unfortunate.

“That is absolutely nonsense. The whole international community, including (former Mozambican) President Chissano, knows that we are committed to the peace process. And since we got committed to the peace process, there has not been any recruitment, any re-arming, any re-grouping, and any supplies that have come from anywhere. That is absolutely rubbish, and it is something that should be condemned by all people who want peace in Uganda,” Matsanga said.

He accused the chief prosecutor of taking sides in the conflict.

“We are negotiating for peace and the prosecutor is becoming a political tool and confusing the peace talks against the will of the people of Uganda,” he pointed out.

Matsanga questioned the credibility of the ICC’s Chief prosecutor.

“I think the prosecutor has lost his one method of analysis of the northern Uganda conflict. Two, methodology of investigation is flawed, and almost everything that the prosecutor has done in northern Uganda is questionable,” he said.

Matsanga dismissed suggestions that for peace and justice to be achieved, the arrest warrants against the top LRA leadership should be pursued.

“Justice cannot be offered by taking in commanders and leaving the troops in the field. That is wrong justice. The problem we have is with imperialism. The people of Uganda have said there is a traditional method of justice, which heals all the wounds, which has been used in Africa for many centuries before the white person arrived in this continent,” he noted.

Matsanga questioned the rationale of why a traditional form of justice is not being applied to heal the wounds of the victims of the LRA insurrection.

“Why are we trying to say we should actually follow the one that is in the Hague, where a prosecutor is very against the LRA? He always talks about the LRA. Why doesn’t he talk about the UPDF (Uganda Peoples Defence Force), which is still killing the people of northern Uganda, when the LRA has left the field, and they are one thousand, two thousand miles away from Uganda? That is a political persecution, which the prosecutor himself and his office are trying to allege against the LRA,” he said.

Matsanga dismissed the prosecutor’s allegations even further, calling them untruths.

“It is ridiculous, and it is sardonic, prudish, and it should be discarded by the international community,” he said.

Somalia: Does Anyone Care?

From Reuters

The carnage and suffering in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade -- but you'd hardly know it from your nightly news.

For a mix of reasons, from public fatigue at another African conflict to international diplomatic divisions and frustration, a war slaughtering civilians and creating a huge refugee crisis has failed to grab world attention or stir global players.

"There is a massive tragedy unfolding in Mogadishu, but from the world's silence, you would think it's Christmas," said the head of a Mogadishu political think-tank, who declined to be named because of the precarious security situation in Somalia.

Somalis caught up in Mogadishu's worst violence for 16 years are painfully aware of their place on the global agenda.

"Nobody cares about Somalia, even if we die in our millions," said Abdirahman Ali, a 29-year-old father-of-two who works as a security guard in Mogadishu.

Liban Ibrahim, a 30-year-old bus driver in the Somali capital, said: "The world does not care about our plight. The United Nations is busy issuing statements when innocent civilians are dying every day."

The latest flare-up followed a U.S.-backed Ethiopian-Somali government New Year offensive that ended the Islamists' six-month rule of Mogadishu.

In the past month, local officials and activists say nearly 1,300 people have died in fighting between government troops and their Ethiopian allies on the one side, and Islamists with disgruntled Hawiye clan fighters on the other.

Aid agencies have sounded the alarm over an exodus of 321,000 refugees from Mogadishu, and there have been appeals for calm from the United Nations and the Arab League. But nothing like the sort of global mobilisation or concern that would normally accompany events of such magnitude, analysts say.

"In Washington, of course, people are too tied up with Iraq and their own impending elections to pay any attention to yet more news of Somalis killing each other," said a Nairobi-based Western diplomat who asked not to be named.

"And if they do have a snippet of time for Africa, it's only Darfur because of the international dimensions that has taken and the power of the lobbyists," the diplomat added.

Sudan: Khartoum Booms as Darfur Burns

From the BBC

As middle-class Sudanese couples wipe off the dust to inspect new bathroom suites for sale by the roadside in central Khartoum, they can see a new vision of the city's future rising in the distance.

A massive Libyan-financed five-star hotel, shaped like a boat's sail, has already changed the city's low-rise skyline and work is well underway to transform parts of the sleepy city centre into a bustling, gleaming 24-hour metropolis.

The oil-fuelled construction boom may also lead to social changes, although the government shows less sign of loosening its grip here than the economy.

Under Islamic Sharia law, alcohol is banned and unlike most African cities, hardly any music can be heard on the streets, or even in the markets.

But businessmen are revelling in the new opportunities opening up, now that there is peace in the oilfields after the end of the 21-year conflict between north and south.

"This is the best situation we have had for 20 years," one Sudanese businessman told the BBC News website.

Less than a decade after the oil came online, Sudan is already the third largest producer in Africa.

Even better for business, the government, which used to tightly control all economic activity, has passed a host of reforms to make international trade much easier.

"I used to have to queue for ages to buy a packet of breakfast cereal," a hotel owner says.

"Now I have a choice of 20 brands".

The big question, however is whether ordinary Sudanese will benefit from the oil wealth, or whether it will be kept by a small elite, as in countries such as Nigeria and Angola.

Taxi-drivers like Omar, however, prefer home-grown beans and lentils to imported cornflakes.

"Oil, what oil? I haven't seen any oil," he complains, as he drives his battered old yellow cab.

"Ask the government, they've got the oil."

Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund has praised Sudan's reforms and expects the economy to grow by 11% this year - one of the highest rates in Africa.

And a massive project is taking shape in the heart of the capital, where the Blue Nile meets the White Nile.

Genocide: How One Word Ended a Career

From McClatchy Newspapers

Ambassador John Evans ended one life and started another when he uttered one remarkable word: genocide.

As the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, and a career diplomat, Evans knew the uses of circumlocution. Some words, he understood, must be avoided. But then, speaking in Fresno, Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif., two years ago, Evans violated U.S. policy by declaring that Armenians were the victims of a genocide from 1915 to 1923.

"Clearly, I had stepped out of the box," Evans said in an interview. "But what I didn't know precisely was what the reaction would be."

He found out soon enough.

Evans' State Department superiors published apologies in his name. They cut him out of decision-making, then ended his ambassador's posting altogether. His Foreign Service career collapsed, while his fellow diplomats debated whether he was heroic or foolhardy.

"I had some colleagues who managed to tell me I did the right thing," Evans said, "and I had others who were dubious."

The fallout continues: The United States still lacks a permanent ambassador in Yerevan because of Senate discontent with Evans' treatment.

April 24 is the day that Armenians worldwide commemorate the start of the 1915 horrors. Members of Congress will give speeches. President Bush will issue a traditional declaration, omitting the linchpin word "genocide."

Evans will speak freely at the National Press Club, something he couldn't do during his 35-year State Department career. He also has written a manuscript, for which he's seeking a book publisher.

"I came to what I felt was an ethical dilemma," Evans said. "I felt I could not carry out the policy of denial of the Armenian genocide."

April 24, 1915, was when leaders of the Ottoman Empire's Young Turk government began rounding up Armenian leaders. What happened next is unsettling history. Armenians say an estimated 1.5 million died.

Numerous historians and myriad state and foreign governments have concluded that the Ottoman Empire events amounted to genocide.

Under international law adopted in 1948, genocide is the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." It covers killing and deliberately inflicting "conditions of life calculated to bring about (the population's) physical destruction in whole or in part."

Turkey fiercely opposes the description of the Armenian deaths as genocide, maintaining that the Armenians were caught in a complex, multi-front war and that considerably fewer than 1.5 million died.

The diaspora cast Armenians out to U.S. areas that include California's San Joaquin Valley, New Jersey and Michigan. These concentrated populations prompted American politicians to take up the Armenian cause.

"The failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future," says a pending House of Representatives resolution that Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., co-authored this year.

Some 190 members co-sponsored the resolution. It hasn't been scheduled for a vote yet, amid intense lobbying. Last week, members of the Turkish Parliament lobbied against it.

The Bush administration opposes the resolution, as did the Clinton administration. Although President Reagan officially recognized "the genocide of the Armenians" in April 1981, the standard administration response has been resistance.

"It's a tragedy; everybody agrees with that," Richard Hoagland, Bush's nominee to replace Evans, declared at his Senate confirmation hearing last June, but "instead of getting stuck in the past and vocabulary, I would like to see what we can do to bring different sides together."

His nomination has been frozen, caught in the Capitol Hill conflict. The resolution's fate turns on whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., kills the bill at Bush's request, Radanovich predicted.

Now 58, Evans said that no one had warned him explicitly to watch his words before he became ambassador to Armenia in 2004. Everyone simply knew, he said, that "there was a taboo" against the word genocide. He eventually decided that he needed to "help people understand" the history.

"I chose to do something which goes against the grain of every diplomat," Evans said, and that was "to break with the policy of the United States government."

When his comments became widely known, the State Department issued apologies. The statements included made-up quotes that Evans now says others crafted and attributed to him.

"Let's put it this way: I had no role in it," he said of the statements.

The State Department stresses that ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, and officials have publicly denied that Evans was pulled from Yerevan prematurely.

Nonetheless, he and his wife, Donna, have been living at their daughter's house in New York since last September. They can't move back into their own Washington-area home yet, because they had rented it out for the full three years they had expected to be in Armenia.

Darfur: Khartoum's Strategy of Chaos

A post by Julie Flint on Comment is Free

I recently spent almost a month in the areas of North Darfur that are controlled by the non-signatories. I traveled many hundreds of miles. The truth is that these areas have been transformed since the DPA was signed and the Sudan government's partner in peace, former rebel leader Minni Minawi, was defeated and his forces were expelled from the area. The oppression and abuse of civilians that marked Minawi's regime is much reduced.

Civilians are no longer being arrested, tortured, killed and raped as they were when Minawi, the sole rebel signatory of the stillborn DPA, controlled the area. They are no longer being "taxed" on animals, markets, even water. There is, among many rebel commanders, a genuine desire to give the rebel movement structure - something Minawi and his rival, Abdel Wahid Mohamed al-Nur, never did - to introduce a measure of accountability.

In the village of Bakaore, I met Omda Hamid Manna, one of the most respected community leaders in North Darfur and a pillar of the local Native Administration, the network of tribal leaders which the British introduced in Sudan's re-independence days and the only effective form of local government Darfur has experienced in the past century. "Minni took food aid from the civilians," he told me. "No one protested. If you protested, you were killed!"

Omda Hamid was himself "arrested" by Minawi's faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in November 2003, and only released upon payment of 20m Sudanese pounds.

"After they arrested me, they tied me," he told me. "It was winter. They took all my clothes and poured buckets of cold water over me. They tied my hands behind my back. They bent my legs back, put stones behind the knees, and tied them. They hanged me from a tree."

Today, Omda Hamid said, life in rebel-controlled North Darfur is much-improved. The rebels have abolished the military courts before which Minawi's men used to bring civilians, and are re-enabling the civilian courts of the Native Administration. He remarked: "There is a very big difference from the days of Minni" - whom Bush invited to the White House after the DPA was signed and sealed.

In the last year, the lion's share of the abuses committed in Darfur have been committed by the Sudan government and its proxies - the Janjaweed militias, Minawi's SLA faction and individual rebel commanders who signed "Declarations of Commitment" to the DPA. Yes, there are still abuses among the non-signatories, but they have decreased significantly, and efforts are being made to control and punish them.

Where does all this leave Darfur? The best-case scenario is that the SLA's unity conference will still take place, albeit much-delayed, and will set the stage, sooner or later, for new peace talks. The worst-case scenario is that the relative peace the people of North Darfur have enjoyed in recent months will be replaced by a new round of extreme violence, and the non-signatories' commitment to a negotiated peace will be replaced, reluctantly, by a return to arms.

Darfur: US Says Time Running Out for Sudan

From Reuters

The State Department's no. 2 official accused Sudan's government on Monday of a campaign of intimidation against aid workers and said time was running out to accept a hybrid force in Darfur or face new sanctions.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who returned from Sudan last week, said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had "weeks" to agree to a U.N./African Union hybrid force in Darfur or have new U.S. sanctions slapped on them that were announced by President George W. Bush last week.

"Time is running out," Negroponte told reporters.

Negroponte said his meeting with Bashir was not encouraging and he was pessimistic the Sudanese leader would follow through and implement promises to allow U.N. peacekeepers to supplement struggling AU troops already in Darfur.

"I came away from that meeting with a healthy, strong sense of skepticism as to whether they might fulfill their commitments," he said.

In addition to rapidly accepting the hybrid force, Sudan's government must also disarm Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, held responsible for much of the violence in Darfur, said Negroponte.

"The Arab militias that we all know could not exist without the Sudanese government's active support," he said.

Moreover, rebel groups that refused to sign a peace deal in May of last year must put down their arms and go to the negotiating table, said Negroponte.

Negroponte said the government of Sudan's record in allowing aid groups access to displaced people was "not encouraging" and there was no sign an agreement it made with aid workers this month was working.

"The denial of visas, the harassment of aid workers and other measures have created the impression that the government of Sudan is engaged in a deliberate campaign of intimidation," he said.

"We have heard some examples of them creating additional complications for humanitarian workers since that time (when the agreement was made with aid groups)," Negroponte added.

Several international aid agencies said on Monday they were suspending work in the town of Um Dukhun in Darfur because of attacks on them, disrupting help to some 100,000 people in the area near the border with Chad and Central African Republic.

While in Sudan, Negroponte visited a displaced persons camp in Darfur where the number of people seeking shelter in that one camp had risen from 25,000 to 50,000 in the past year, a pattern repeated elsewhere, he said.

Aid groups estimate that since 2003 more than 2.5 million have been displaced by the conflict in western Sudan.

He said the health and nutrition of people in the camps had stabilized but the situation was precarious because of a lack of political agreement and security problems.

"It would not take much for conditions to deteriorate fairly dramatically unless, as we are advocating, the peacekeeper presence in Darfur is increased," he said.

Darfur: Sudan Intimidating Aid Workers, Says US

From the AP

The State Department's No. 2 official accused the Sudanese government on Monday of engaging in a "deliberate campaign of intimidation" against humanitarian aid workers assigned to bring relief to the people of Darfur.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who recently returned from a trip to Sudan, said President Omar al-Bashir's government has been denying visas to aid workers and putting additional obstacles in their path.

Speaking at a news conference, Negroponte said the number of displaced persons in Sudan, widely reported to be 2.5 million, has been increasing.

He said the health and nutrition situation at camps for the displaced has stabilized and there has been a substantial reduction in malnutrition and mortality rates.

But the situation is "very precarious" and it "would not take much for things to deteriorate dramatically," he added.

Negroponte said his meeting last week with al-Bashir "was not particularly encouraging." Any agreement reached with the Sudanese, he said, tends to be grudging and "always leaves questions as to whether they will follow through."

Darfur: Edwards Calls for Sanctions, No-Fly Zone

From the AP

Democratic presidential prospect John Edwards laid out a new proposal Monday to end atrocities in Sudan and criticized other candidates who haven't discussed specifics of their policy ideas.

Edwards, just days before the first 2008 presidential debate, said the United States and its NATO allies need to impose multilateral sanctions against the Sudanese government and a no-fly zone over the country's Darfur region. He also urged leaders to put a United Nations peacekeeping force on the ground to end the fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.

"This is a huge moral issue for America and the world," Edwards said during a radio town hall held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We, along with others, have stood by and watched it continue."

Edwards also urged the United States to join the peace process in Uganda, where leaders are seeking reconciliation after a two-decade insurgency displaced two million people. Edwards visited the east African country last year.

Darfur: Aid Agencies Suspend Operations

From IRIN

Several aid agencies working in West Darfur have suspended work in Um Dhukun, affecting about 100,000 people, including refugees from Chad and Central African Republic (CAR), a spokesperson said.

Citing continuing violence, the charities Oxfam GB, Save the Children-Spain, Mercy Corps and Triangle said they had temporarily suspended all but essential work after increases in violent attacks on aid workers in the area.

"We have temporarily withdrawn; we need local authorities and the people of Um Dukhun to give us assurances that this will be secure when we return," Caroline Nursery, country director for Oxfam in Sudan, said.

Um Dukhun is at the southernmost end of West Darfur and close to the borders with Chad and the CAR. According to the agencies, their decision was informed by several incidents in the past three weeks. Among others, a humanitarian convoy was shot at and robbed outside the town, an aid agency security was guard beaten into a critical condition, and a vehicle belonging to Oxfam was hijacked in a camp sheltering refugees and displaced people.

"Incidents such as these are now an all-too-frequent occurrence in Darfur and humanitarian vehicles are being hijacked every few days," said Nursery. "This is seriously threatening our ability to respond to the enormous humanitarian need in the region."

Several attacks on humanitarian targets forced a significant withdrawal of aid workers in December. An attack in Gereida, South Darfur, brought the number moved to 400. Oxfam and Action Contre le Faim stopped operations after they lost 12 vehicles. The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Manuel Aranda da Silva, described the attacks at the time as "crippling".

"It is very difficult to be sure who the attackers are," explained Nursery on Monday. "There is increasing factionalisation so the rebel groups and the Arab militias are all splitting into smaller groups and nobody knows who is in control in different areas."

At least 200,000 people are estimated to have died since the Darfur conflict began in 2003 between government forces, allied Arab militias and rebels seeking greater autonomy. More than two million people have been displaced inside Sudan and in neighbouring Chad and 12 humanitarian workers killed since May 2006.

"We greatly regret any suspension, even temporarily, of assistance to people in need, but such attacks on humanitarian workers are not acceptable and cannot be tolerated," Oxfam and Save the Children said in a joint statement. "All parties to the conflict in Darfur must respect humanitarian operations and do more to bring those responsible to account."

Darfur: Khartoum Vows Two-Month Halt in Military Operations

From AFP

A top Sudanese government official on Monday offered a two-month halt in military operations in strife-torn Darfur to allow for rebel groups to join the peace process.

"The government forces will not conduct military operations in Darfur for the next two months," presidential adviser Majzub al-Khalifa Ahmed said.

He said the period should be used by rebel groups that did not endorse a May 2006 peace agreement to join negotiations aimed at ending the four-year-old civil conflict and "catch up with the peace march".

Khalifa was speaking at a ceremony to mark the launch of the Darfur Transitional Regional Authority (DTRA), a body created as part of the implementation of the moribund peace deal.

The agreement reached in May 2006 in Abuja was signed by the government and only one of three negotiating rebel factions, failing to make any impact. Rebel splinter groups have since flourished and violence spiralled.

Observers have questioned the viability of such a peace agreement and called for further international action, but Khalifa insisted the signatories should press ahead with its implementation.

The Abuja signatories "are capable of implementing the agreement and achieving peace in Darfur", the official said. "The inauguration of the regional authority constitutes a new stage in the history of the Sudan."

Khartoum "trusts that the authority will work hard towards implementing the Abuja agreement by building villages, helping IDPs [internally displaced people] return home and carrying out development projects, building roads and providing electricity", Ahmed said.

The ceremony was also attended by Minni Minnawi, who heads the faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the Abuja agreement and was consequently appointed as special presidential adviser.

"The authority will as of today [Monday] begin exercising all its security, economic, political and humanitarian duties in addition to extending the basic services to the people of Darfur," said Minnawi, who is also DTRA chairperson

Darfur: British Firm Breaks Sudan Arms Boycott

From the TimesOnline - via POTP

A BRITISH company has been transporting ammunition inside Sudan in defiance of European sanctions. A Sunday Times investigation has also uncovered evidence that Land Rover Defenders have been supplied to the Sudanese police, who have fitted machineguns to turn them into highly mobile killing machines.

The two episodes are unconnected but illustrate the inadequacy of the sanctions regime imposed on Sudan by western nations disgusted with widespread human rights violations.

Last week, Rolls-Royce announced it was pulling out of Sudan, citing concerns about the crisis in Darfur, western Sudan. The company makes equipment used to pump oil in the region.

“We have decided to discontinue our business there. We will progressively withdraw from support activities,” said a spokesman. “The reason is the increasing political and humanitarian concerns . . . we are not in Darfur, but we are in the country.”

At least 200,000 people have died and 2.5m peasants have been uprooted from their villages and forced into refugee camps since 2003, when rebels took up arms in Darfur against the central government. The widespread killings by government forces and their Janjaweed militias have been denounced by Britain, and America has called it genocide. The UN has imposed an arms embargo.

Despite this, the government has continued to obtain arms, often from China. Significant quantities of guns and ammunition have been shipped to Darfur rebels after being imported into southern Sudan through private air charter companies.

One such shipment took place on November 23. An Antonov-28 cargo plane owned by Dallex Trade, registered in London, with a São Tomé registration S9-PSV, delivered boxes of ammunition from Yei to Juba in southern Sudan.

The delivery, on behalf of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), was in breach of EU sanctions which prohibit the sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related material including ammunition to Sudan.

Dallex Trade is a mysterious entity with worldwide links. Its ownership is hidden behind several US-based nominees. One shareholder is a front company in Belize whose signatory is a man living on the island of Niue, in the South Pacific.

The Sunday Times has seen western intelligence reports that link Dallex’s São Tomé operating partner Goliaf Air with the notorious arms dealer Victor Anatoliyevich Bout. If the report is accurate, it casts an even more sinister light on the shipments.

Bout has been named in many UN reports as a gunrunner in the African wars of the last decade. He is wanted on an Interpol warrant but has been in hiding in Russia and was last sighted in Damascus two weeks ago.

Inquiries at the registered office in London of Dallex Trade last week were met by an offer to forward any letter to an address in Lithuania.

Allegations about Land Rover first surfaced in a report to the United Nations security council last year. Members of an expert team saw large numbers of white-painted Defenders awaiting delivery at the docks in Port Sudan.

While some were destined for humanitarian use, an African Union official in Khartoum said the “vast majority” were for the interior ministry and government.

Other observers saw Land Rovers fitted with 12.7mm machineguns driven by Sudanese police in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan. African Union observers were told by one eyewitness that he had seen police shooting at civilians in Tawilla in northern Darfur, from vehicles with machineguns mounted on the back.

Land Rover’s parent company, Ford, admitted to the US government last year that American sanctions had been inadvertently breached. Land Rover in Britain has said it has taken steps to stop the export of any more Defenders to Sudan and has recovered some from a distributor.

While Land Rover has taken action to stop such exports, the role of Dallex Trade remains unresolved amid allegations over the death of one of the aircraft ground staff in Sudan. After the man, an employee of a Ken-yan company called Acariza Aviation, was found hanged, six men were arrested on suspicion of murder, although one, a local operations manager, was later released.

UN officials said last week that Africa was a haven of unscrupulous and criminal aircraft operators. They chase fat profits by transporting dubious cargo, including arms and ammunition, across the continent without asking questions.

The arms shipments into Sudan, in breach of sanctions, “almost certainly” fit into this category, officials said.

Darfur: Eliasson Says Sudan, Rebels Want to End Crisis/Threat of Sanctions Can Help

From the AP

The U.N.'s special envoy for Darfur and the European Union put pressure on Sudan and rebel leaders Monday to agree to new peace negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur.

Jan Eliasson, the U.N. and EU special envoy for Darfur, said that efforts to seek a negotiated settlement to the conflict "does not exclude that there are also other measures that can be taken," notably new U.N. sanctions.

The EU's 27 foreign ministers told Sudan that they would back new sanctions by the United Nations Security Council if Khartoum did not cooperate to let in 3,000 extra peacekeepers and pursue peace talks to end the crisis.

In a statement, the ministers said they remained "deeply concerned about the appalling security situation" in Darfur.

Eliasson warned time was running short, due to increased frustration in the international community over inaction by Sudan and the rebels to end the fighting.

"There has been far too long a time of waiting, delays in the process," Eliasson said. "We expect the parties to live up to this. We expect a reduction of violence. We expect an improvement in the security situation on the ground ... Everybody realizes that time is on nobody's side."

He also warned that new problems were starting to arise out of the Darfur conflict, specifically new inter-tribal fighting.

Eliasson appealed to the 27 EU nations to offer more aid and other practical support to the African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The EU is looking to find money to further finance the peacekeeping force in Darfur on top of the €400 million (US$544 million) it has provided so far.

From Reuters

A senior United Nations official said on Monday the threat of sanctions against Sudan could help secure a political breakthrough in the Darfur crisis.

U.S. President George W. Bush warned Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week he had one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or the United States would impose sanctions and consider other punitive options.

Britain has also stepped up the threat of sanctions.

"I would hope that the awareness of the sanctions would play a role," the U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for Sudan Jan Eliasson told Reuters in an interview.

"I hope we'll not have to reach that stage, but it's a reminder of realities, of which I hope the parties to the conflict are aware," said Eliasson, trying to work towards a peace accord with the African Union's Salim Ahmed Salim.

The United Nations says about 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 when rebels in the vast western region took up arms against the Khartoum government, charging it with neglect. Sudan says only 9,000 people have perished.

EU foreign ministers, briefed by Eliasson on Monday, said in a statement they would be ready to consider "further measures" -- which officials say stand for sanctions -- against any party that blocks U.N. support to the African Union force in Darfur. They did not spell out what these sanctions could be.

Eliasson said world powers should focus on getting a political deal among the government and rebel groups in Darfur on power sharing, wealth distribution and security.

"If we don't deal with the basic problem, this would be an unending exercise, both in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations."

Eliasson said that the Sudanese government and the rebel groups he had met had all said there would not be a military solution to the conflict.

"I take that as a sign that there is a growing frustration and fatigue about the continued war," he said.

Darfur: Sudan Says Willing to Talk on UN-AU Operation

From Reuters

Sudan is willing to talk with the United Nations and the African Union about a hybrid U.N.-AU operation in Darfur but will not accept such a force under Western "blackmail", a presidential adviser said on Sunday.

Mustafa Osman Ismail strongly criticised the United States and Britain for threatening to impose sanctions on Khartoum for not accepting a large U.N. force to secure the troubled region in western Sudan.

He also said Sudan was committed to the first two U.N. support packages to help the underfunded and overstretched 5,000-strong African Union force in Darfur.

"There is readiness to talk with the United Nations and the African Union about the third stage, which is the hybrid operation," he told reporters after talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.

The second support package includes the deployment of 3,000 U.N. police and military personnel. Khartoum has said these personnel would only provide logistical support for the AU force and insisted African troops will dominate any peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

But U.S. President George W. Bush warned Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir he had one last chance to avoid sanctions by agreeing to a full joint U.N.-AU force.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also said the situation in Darfur was "unacceptable" and threatened Khartoum with a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorising sanctions.

Ismail, however, said Khartoum would not bend to pressure.

"There is an illusion among some Western leaders, like the prime minister of Britain, that Khartoum only responds to pressure. This is an illusion," he said.

"The challenge and the test now facing Washington and London is that they give up this blackmail ... and allow the United Nations to fund the AU troops."

[edit]

Eritrea mediated a peace deal between Sudan and eastern rebels in October. Khartoum has expressed willingness to hold peace talks in Asmara, but some Western nations are wary they will be sidelined if negotiations are held in the Red Sea state.

Ismail also said Chadian President Idriss Deby was expected to visit Khartoum early in May "to focus on what Chad could contribute with, since the positions of these Darfuri (rebel) groups are inside Chad."

Sudan and Chad have traded accusations of supporting rebel groups on both sides.

Darfur: Genocide Week to Sound Alarm in Nearly 50 States

From the Christian Post

ctivists and concerned citizens will sound the alarm this week for the third Global Days for Darfur to alert Americans of the genocide in western Sudan and press President Bush, Congress and the international community to take stronger, immediate actions to end the violence.

Some 345 events in 250 cities and 45 states will take place Apr. 23-29 varying in size and focus. From New York’s Wall Street to a small town high school, from Olympic speed skating gold medalist Joey Cheek to Darfuri refugees – many will join together this week to raise awareness, motivate American citizens and urge the U.S. government to take action.

The Darfur genocide has resulted in more than 200,000 people killed and 2.5 million civilians displaced since 2003. The Arab-dominated Khartoum government is accused of unleashing Arab nomads called janjaweed militias on the ethnically African Darfurians after rebels rose up against the central government.

In the past, Global Days for Darfur has attracted tens of thousands of supporters around the world. In September 2006, 57 events took place in 41 countries on six continents. The second annual event in December featured protests outside Sudanese embassies around the world to raise awareness to systematic sexual violence against the women of Darfur.

Ahead of Global Days for Darfur, President George W. Bush had delivered an unprecedented speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he gave clear measures on how the U.S. government would press Khartoum to accept the hybrid U.N.-A.U. peace keeping force in Darfur.

“It is evil we’re now seeing in Sudan and we’re not going to back down,” Bush had declared last Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

The United Nations and the world community has been wrestling with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to allow U.N. troops into Darfur to support the under-funded and overstretched 7,000 African Union force in Darfur. Al-Bashir has continuously gone back on his word after agreeing to allow the U.N. force into Darfur to supplement the A.U. troops.

Bush’s plan calls for tightening as well as imposing new economic sanctions on Sudan if it does not comply with its agreement to allow for a U.N.-A.U. force, stop supporting violent militias, and allow humanitarian aid to reach the people of Darfur, according to AP.

Economic sanctions include blocking any of the Sudan government’s dollar transaction within the U.S. system; adding 29 companies owned or controlled by the Sudanese government to a list that would make it a crime for American companies and individuals to do business with them; and focusing sanctions on individuals responsible for violence.

However, some have criticized Bush for failing to announce a definitive deadline for the tough sanctions.

David C. Rubenstein, executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, has said his organization was “disappointed” that President Bush had failed to announce an immediate imposition of the sanctions or a specific deadline for the sanctions.

“Diplomacy alone with President al-Bashir has failed, as the record of the last four years so well-described by the president in his speech makes unarguable,” said Rubenstein, in a released statement. “Any further delay in the imposition of tough, coercive measures to give diplomacy any hope of success, and the people of Darfur any hope of a future, can have no justification.”

During the weeklong events for Darfur, people will gather and rally in hope that the U.S. government will impose the sanction immediately.

The Global Days for Darfur is sponsored in part by the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of over 170 faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian organizations. The coalition’s member organizations represent 130 million people with the common goal of helping the people of Darfur.

CAR: Thousands Flee Fighting

From Reuters

housands of people have fled fighting in northwestern Central African Republic, some swimming over the border after their homes were torched during government raids to hunt down rebels, local officials said on Saturday.

Government soldiers launched raids on villages on the northwest border with Cameroon and Chad between Tuesday and Thursday to try to root out gunmen who attacked a town last weekend, the mayor of some of the affected settlements said.

"Thousands of people from the town of Mann, the villages of Kodi, Ngbama, Ndanga and Kore in my commune and Bokolere, Bang and Ngouboye in the next commune have all gone into hiding in Cameroon," Mayor Richard Laoutaye told Reuters by phone.

"Some swam across the river Mbere, some took pirogues (wooden fishing boats), while some were able to cross a bridge by foot. Others are in the bush and have health and food problems," he said.

One man was killed in the town of Mann and another suspected of being a rebel had his arm amputated by government soldiers as he tried to flee, Laoutaye said, speaking from refuge in Cameroon after himself being beaten by soldiers.

In the village of Ndanga, soldiers burned down more than 100 homes after six men arrested there managed to escape, he said.

Central African Republic, a landlocked former French colony, ranks near the bottom of almost all development rankings. Its ill-resourced government has control of little beyond the capital Bangui and banditry is rife.

The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said this month the country faced a growing humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a million people -- a quarter of the population -- disrupted by civil and regional warfare involving various rebel groups.

The government signed a peace accord with rebels in the northeast, which borders troubled Chad and Sudan's Darfur region, just over a week ago, establishing a ceasefire.

But swathes of the country remain unstable, creating what aid workers have termed a "forgotten" humanitarian crisis.

"Our population is hostage to rebels, hostage to bandits, and an enemy of the army meant to protect it. And in the face of all that, neither the president, who is also minister of defence, nor the U.N., nor the Central African human rights league, is reacting," said Marie Agbe, a local Kodi deputy.

"We do not want another Rwanda here. We do not want a genocide in Central African Republic," she said by phone.

DRC/Uganda: Army, UN to Monitor Rebel Move to Assembly Point

From IRIN

Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and the United Nations will verify that Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have assembled near the DRC-Sudan border as agreed.

The rebels are expected to assemble at Ri-Kwangba before peace talks resume on Thursday between LRA leaders and Ugandan government officials in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.

"The FARDC [DRC army], with support from MONUC [the UN mission in DRC], will verify the movement of the LRA to the designated area of Ri-Kwangba," stated a communiqué signed after a meeting in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on Saturday.

The meeting was attended by the Ugandan army commander Gen Aronda Nyakairima, his DRC counterpart Kisempia Sungilanga Lombe, and Babacar Gaye from MONUC.

"Both MONUC and the Congolese army will report any movement to the contrary," the statement added.

A week ago, the Ugandan government and the LRA renewed a ceasefire agreement that expired in February. They also agreed to resume peace talks on 26 April to end a brutal, two-decade insurgency that has wrecked the northern region. The agreement, reached at a meeting chaired by the UN envoy to areas affected by the conflict, former Mozambique President, Joaquim Chissano, allowed the rebels to assemble in Ri-Kwangba rather than two neutral camps as agreed in earlier ceasefire agreements.

The two armies also mapped out eight measures to promote military cooperation against Ugandan rebel groups and what they called "other negative forces" based in the DRC. Talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government stalled in December when the rebels walked out, saying they feared for their lives. They also demanded a new venue and new mediators, accusing the southern Sudanese government of bias. The talks aim to end a conflict that has raged since 1988, when the elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony took over leadership of a two-year-old regional rebellion among northern Uganda's ethnic Acholi minority. Nearly two million people have been displaced by the conflict.

Genocide: Why Armenia Pays High Price for 'Genocide' Campaign

From The Christian Science Monitor

Gevork Melikyan, aged 94, stares off into the distance with cloudy eyes. His daughter-in-law says he has trouble remembering what happened last week, but he remembers with startling clarity the day when his family fled Turkey – right down to the name of the dog they left behind.

He was called "Challo," the old man recalls, dentures clacking. "I remember my mother telling me, 'Lock the door and throw the key over the gate.' " When they fled, they left the dog behind to guard the house.

Mr. Melikyan is one of the last remaining survivors of the mass killing and expulsion of ethnic Armenians from Turkey that took place between 1915 and 1917, which is widely recognized as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey disputes that characterization, however, saying there was no organized campaign to kill Armenians and that the deportations took place in the context of war. As the last witnesses reach the twilight of their lives, the question of how to judge what happened in those years remains center stage in the region's complex politics.

The international campaign for universal recognition of the massacres as a genocide has been generally led by the Armenian diaspora, many of whom are descendants of families scattered from 1915-17. While the Armenian government and most Armenians support the campaign, there is also a growing recognition within the country that Armenia pays a heavy price for continued tensions with Turkey.

Currently there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries, and Turkey has closed all land borders to Armenia, in part because of the genocide recognition issue. All trade between the two countries must pass through neighboring Georgia, which levies heavy taxes on goods.

"I think our position is that we are open and we are ready for cooperation," says Ashot Tovmasyan, a young gas company employee who was out on an afternoon stroll with his family. "I don't think that most people have hatred for Turks." But, he added, recognizing the genocide is "a matter of historical truth."

A resolution to recognize the events of 1915-17 as genocide was introduced in the US House of Representatives early this year, with supporters pushing for its passage around April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

The Bush administration – like previous administrations – opposes the resolution, saying it will compromise national security by harming relations with Muslim ally Turkey, which has lobbied hard against it. But new House speaker Nancy Pelosi's longtime support of such a resolution, together with the broadest House support such a resolution has seen in 20 years, has led to expectations that the resolution has the first realistic chance of passing in many years.

Genocide: The Politics of Saying 'Genocide'

From the Los Angeles Times

ON TUESDAY, President Bush will be obliged, by law, to wrap his double-talking mouth around one of the most curiously persistent debates in modern geopolitics: Whether to call a 92-year-old genocide a "genocide."

Every April 24 since 1994, the U.S. president has delivered a proclamation honoring the people Congress has declared to be "the victims of genocide, especially the 1 1/2 million people of Armenian ancestry who were the victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923." And every year since 1994, the U.S. president has managed to do it without once uttering the G-word. It's a ritual of linguistic realpolitik in deference to the massive objections from Washington's important NATO ally, Turkey.

But 2007 may be the year that the cop-out finally blows up in a president's face. What was once the obscure obsession of marginalized immigrants from a powerless little Caucasus country has blossomed in recent years into a force that has grown increasingly difficult to ignore. In 2000, the Armenian issue helped fuel one of the most expensive House races in U.S. history; two years ago, it turned a mild-mannered career U.S. diplomat into an unlikely truth-telling martyr. Now the question of how to address these long-ago events is having an impact on next month's elections in Turkey.

What's more, Congress appears poised to vote on a resolution urging the president to say the words "Armenian genocide" when observing the awkwardly named "National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man" on April 24 — the date in 1915 when the Ottoman predecessors of modern Turkey launched the genocide by rounding up 250 Armenian intellectuals for eventual execution.

The resolution won't take effect on Tuesday. The Bush administration, ever mindful of its delicate relationship with Turkey (especially with a war in Iraq next door), takes the bill so seriously that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned in a joint letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) that it could "harm American troops in the field." The lobbying has been successful enough that the House has delayed its vote until after this year's April 24 commemoration. But passage later this year would still be an enormous blow to the White House.

Darfur: Ban Asks for More Time Before Sanctions

Pathetic - From the AP

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the Security Council to allow more time for diplomacy before considering whether to impose further economic and military sanctions on Sudan over the situation in Darfur.

The international community should wait and see whether Sudan's decision Monday to allow the deployment of the U.N.'s so-called "heavy support package" to assist the 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur indicates a serious commitment by Khartoum to abide by a three-phase stabilization plan agreed for the volatile western region last year, he said.

"There are some members of the Security Council, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, who have been discussing imposing sanctions against Sudan," Ban told reporters in Geneva on Saturday.

"My position is that when the moment of truth comes and we know that they (Sudan) will not be faithful in implementing this commitment, then I will leave it to Security Council members to take the necessary measures against Sudan," he said.

A series of measures passed by the Security Council already restricts arms shipments to the Sudanese government, the rebels and government-backed janjaweed militias, and the council has imposed further sanctions against specific individuals who defy efforts to bring peace in Darfur.

According to a U.N. report leaked this week, the United Nations panel monitoring existing measures against Sudan has called on the sanctions committee to consider imposing sanctions on more individuals, enhancing the arms embargo, instituting a "no-fly zone" in Darfur and improving the monitoring of any financial freeze or travel ban.

The call came after the committee determined that both the Sudanese government and rebels violated the arms embargo on Darfur.

Senior U.N. officials said on Thursday that Ban made a direct appeal to U.S. President George W. Bush not to impose tough new U.S. sanctions on Khartoum until more time had been allowed for diplomatic negotiations.

[edit]

Ban described the situation in Darfur as unacceptable, and said he would expedite the military deployment process at the same time as continuing diplomatic negotiations.

"I am going to concentrate first of all on strictly implementing this second stage and engage in further negotiations with the Sudanese government so that we will be able to deploy United Nations and African Union hybrid peacekeeping operations in Darfur," he said.

Darfur: Two Observations

While reading through the recent UN report of the Panel of Experts posted here, I came across this chart

Fragmentation and factionalization among specific armed groups

74. Since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006 there has been significant fragmentation within the two original groups that were non-State parties to the N’Djamena Agreement — SLM/A and JEM. The factionalization within SLM/A in particular reflects the previous reality of a loosely organized force of commanders and their subordinate combatants.

75. In addition to the birth of various spin-off factions from the original SLM/A and JEM, a number of alliances and new groups have emerged. The evolution of non-State armed groups is shown in figure 8.



76. This fragmentation of groups and factionalization constitutes a serious impediment to the peace process as it greatly multiplies the number of potential interlocutors with differing, and often unclear and ill-formulated, agendas.

77. As at 10 March 2007, a Commanders’ conference, proposed to provide a forum and focus for the consolidation of the various SLA factions and SLA spin-off groups, had been postponed indefinitely.

I have been following this issue nearly every day for the last three years and I have absolutely no idea who the majority of these groups are or what their position is in the context of the fighting. Back in 2004, there were three rebel groups - today there are twelve or more.

I see this as a pretty telling result of the international community's failure to seriously engage this issue when the crisis was far less complex.

On a different note, I saw via POTP that Danish diplomat Torben Brylle was named to replace Finland's Pekka Haavisto as the European Union's Special Representative for Sudan.

I had absolutely no idea the EU even had a Special Representative for Sudan and I had never even heard of Haavisto until I saw these articles. So either I haven't been paying close enough attention ... or the EU's efforts to date have not been particularly noteworthy.

Darfur: U.S. Law Prevents Google Earth Downloads In Sudan

From the Compiler - Wired News

Earlier this week I posted a short piece asking Compiler readers to help investigate the mysterious blocking of Google Earth downloads within Sudan. The rumor was that the Sudanese government might have been blocking downloads, but as it turns out that wasn’t the case.

It turns out Google was/is blocking the downloads, but they were only doing so in compliance with United States export laws. One of the unintended consequences of the U.S. sanctions on Sudan is that it is illegal to download Google Earth within Sudan.

While Google is doing the right thing in accordance with the law, it is of course highly ironic that a project designed to help raise awareness of the genocide in Sudan can’t be downloaded within its borders.

Fortunately software like Tor exists for exactly these situations. Using Tor’s proxy servers, aide workers in Sudan and the Sudanese themselves can download Google Earth by tricking the Google Earth server with fake proxies. Is it legal? No. But, in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, I think it’s the right thing to do.

Darfur: NRF Threatens to Join Chadian Opposition

From the Sudanese Media Centre

The [Darfur] rebel National Redemption Front has threatened to support the Chadian opposition in case the Chadian authorities decided to expel the movement from Chadian territories.

In a statement to SMC [Sudanese Media Centre], NRF field commander Jabbarah Allah Ishaq said his forces had cooperated with the Chadian army in several military operations against the armed resistance in Chad in return for the right of residence and financial and military support for the NRF forces. He pointed out that that forcing the NRF out of Chad would not serve the interests of the Chadian government forces. If that be the case, he said, his forces would join the Chadian rebels and give them military support to attack strategic positions in Chad.

Darfur: US Media Delegation Critical of Western Portrayal of Situation

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, since I have no idea what this "black American media delegation" actually is - From the Sudanese newspaper Al-Khartoum

The Speaker of parliament, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Tahir, has said that the members of the black American media delegation had reaffirmed that they will help convey the truth about the situation in Sudan to the American people and would inform them of the injustice Sudan is being subjected to as a result of the internationalization of the Darfur issue. He said they would further inform the American people about the unjust campaign led by Jewish organizations within American society against Sudan aimed at lobbying the US to intervene in Sudanese affairs. Al-Tahir told reporters after his meeting with the delegation that he had explained parliament's role in the peace agreement, uniting the national front and defending Sudan's unity and sovereignty.

In this regard, the head of the US delegation told journalists that American media outlets did not reflect the truth of the situation in Sudan particularly with regards to the peace operation in the south and in Darfur. He said US media outlets had given figures for the numbers of displaced people, refugees and deaths resulting from the struggle in Darfur and that it had become apparent to them that these figures and facts were incorrect. The head of the delegation called on the international community to look for the facts, investigate information and identify the truth and not rely on other sources who had no credibility. "To show our respect to Sudanese sovereignty, its borders and laws, we did not attempt to cross its borders from Chad to write reports, we applied for visas for the delegation despite some people's advice not to come to Sudan," he said.

Darfur: Activism and Information

Information on events for the upcoming Global Days for Darfur in the US and around the world - via Save Darfur.

Also, the latest update from the ENOUGH Project

In the absence of strong international engagement, peace remains elusive in three of the world's worst hot spots, according to ENOUGH's April/May Monthly Update, released today.

The past month was especially bleak for Darfur, where a peace agreement signed in May 2006 has failed to bring an end to the fighting. Nearly 4 million people in the region are dependant on humanitarian assistance for survival, 7 African Union peacekeepers were killed in the last month alone, and the conflict continues to spill over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration insists on giving diplomacy another chance. "The U.S. continues to delay in Darfur, an annoying inconvenience to the regime in Khartoum that only emboldens them to continue their obstruction and destruction in Darfur," said Center for American Progress senior fellow Gayle Smith.

In Northern Uganda, peace talks between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) were rescued from collapse in mid-April when UN Special Envoy Joaquim Chissano persuaded the LRA to rejoin the talks on April 26 and extend the cessation of hostilities until the end of June. Ultimately, however, "the international community must convince LRA leader Joseph Kony that this is his best and only chance," International Crisis Group senior advisor John Prendergast argues.

Despite a widely hailed peace deal and recent national election, large-scale violence against civilians continues to destabilize Congo's East. More than 1,000 people die each day as a result of the conflict, as rogue army elements, predatory militias and foreign rebel groups terrorize the countryside. "The U.S. must work with its allies to press the Congolese government and other governments in the region to develop the plans and devote the resources necessary to neutralize these militia groups," said John Prendergast, who recently returned from a visit to both Northern Uganda and Eastern Congo.

ENOUGH calls on the international community, backed by strong U.S. leadership, to implement a "3P" strategy to resolve these crises -- one that promotes the peace, protects the people and punishes the perpetrators of mass atrocities.

This monthly field report also highlights several ways in which activists and concerned citizens can get involved, from participating in Save Darfur's Global Days for Darfur and Invisible Children's Displace Me to joining the Congo Coalition.

"This April marks the 13th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, when some 800,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in 100 days. After Rwanda, the international community said 'NOT ON OUR WATCH' -- but today, we are faced with new horrors in Darfur, northern Uganda and eastern Congo. It is time to stand together to bring an end to these conflicts, once and for all", said ENOUGH Executive Director Anita Sharma.

Darfur: Sudan Accuses U.N. Panel of Fabrications

From the AP

Sudan accused a U.N. panel on Thursday of trying "to settle political scores" by fabricating claims that the government was conducting bombing raids in conflict-wracked Darfur and disguising planes to look like U.N. aircraft.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem insisted that photos in the panel's report of a white plane with "UN" marked on its wings were taken in neighboring Chad or other African countries — not in Darfur. And he said attack helicopters and military aircraft capable of dropping bombs that were photographed in Darfur were there legally.

The ambassador told reporters the panel's report was leaked this week by "the enemies of peace and stability" in the country to destroy "the very good atmosphere" created after Sudan agreed to the first significant deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur to beef up beleaguered African troops in the vast western region.

"It's a fabricated report," Abdelhaleem said. "They want to overshadow this. ... They want all this sensation. They want to settle political scores. They are not interested at all in peace and security in Sudan."

The report by a panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against Sudan was sent to the Security Council sanctions committee, which includes all 15 council members. Its findings were first reported in London's Guardian newspaper on March 28 and in Wednesday's New York Times, which said it obtained the report from a council member.

The sanctions committee gave council members until Thursday afternoon to decide whether the report should be released, and three countries objected so it will not be made public, a council diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made.

Abdelhaleem sent a letter to the committee's chairman, Italy's U.N. Ambassador Marcello Spatafora, on Thursday saying Sudan was "shocked and outraged" that the report was leaked. He asked Spatafora to investigate which of the 15 council members was responsible so "urgent action" — which he did not specify — could be taken against the country.

[edit]

The panel's report, obtained Wednesday by AP, accused the Sudanese government of violating a U.N. arms embargo by flying military aircraft, weapons and ammunition into Darfur. It included photos of military aircraft in South Darfur on Jan. 10 and Jan. 30, and of an attack helicopter in El Fasher, a government-controlled town in North Darfur, on Feb. 26.

Abdelhaleem said the aircraft had been returned to Darfur from southern Sudan as required under the January 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.

"But no aircraft is there to be deployed for military actions in Darfur itself," he said. "It is there because we have a right to have aircraft. It is for us a deterrence from external threats across the borders. It's not from within."

On a map of Darfur, the panel showed over 100 black dots where it said incidents of "aerial bombardment" had taken place between October and January.

Asked who else but the government could be responsible for the bombings, Abdelhaleem said: "These are big lies, big lies."

He accused the panel of including the map "to make some people in this area happy."

"They want to hear this music — that Sudan did that, the government did that, they bombed here, they killed there. This is the music that is very much enjoyed by some people here," Abdelhaleem said.

"I want the music to focus on revitalization of the peace process," he said, as well as deploying the heavy support package and "constructive engagement by the three parties — African Union, United Nations and government of Sudan."

The panel's report also showed photographs of a white Antonov AN-26 twin-engine aircraft with U.N. markings on top of the left wing on the military apron at the airport in El Fasher on March 7 and again on March 27.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep concern" Wednesday at the evidence presented to the council of arms and heavy weapons being flown into Darfur. He asked for full cooperation from the Sudanese government to clarify reports about aircraft with U.N. marking being used "for military purposes," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Abdelhaleem said Sudan had informed the U.N. several months ago "it is a transport plane ... it has no fighting capability at all. There is no 'UN' at all on it."

The panel's photos, he said, were "pictures from Chad, from any country in Africa" — not from El Fasher or elsewhere in Darfur.

"It is all fake. Everything is fake," Abdelhaleem said. "The fact that we opened our airfields to them showed that we had nothing to hide."

From Reuters

Sudan lashed out on Thursday at a leak of a U.N. report that accused Khartoum of violating an arms embargo by flying military aircraft in Darfur and painting planes to make them them look like U.N. aircraft.

Khartoum's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, in a letter to the head of the Security Council's sanctions committee on Sudan, said the "enemies of peace and stability in Sudan" leaked the report to overshadow recent positive peacekeeping developments for turbulent Darfur, where 2 million people have been made homeless.

The report was compiled by outside experts for the council's committee, which includes all 15 member nations, and was published by The New York Times on its Web site on Tuesday.

Abdalhaleem asked Italy's ambassador, Marcello Spatafora, head of the council committee, to investigate those responsible for the leak to the Times.

"It's all fake, everything is fake," Abdalhaleem told reporters of the report. "If we were hiding something we would not have allowed them to go to that airport to take any photos."

The panel said it had seen a Sudanese government airplane in Darfur painted white like U.N. aircraft and with the letters "UN" painted on its wing. Abdalhaleem suggested the plane may have been a U.N. aircraft from southern Sudan.

He also denied Sudan had used aircraft for offensive purposes in Darfur, forbidden by the Security Council, such as bombing villages indiscriminately as the report alleged.

"The last thing they are concerned about is the security and stability of our people," he said, referring to Security Council members he did not name. "They are the last to give anyone a lesson."

The ambassador argued that the leak was timed to detract attention from a deal Sudan reached with the United Nations on Monday on an interim plan to bolster the more than 5,000 African Union troops in Darfur with more than 3,000 military personnel, civilians and equipment.

This operation is not expected to be on the ground until September at the earliest. So far there have been few volunteers, outside of Bangladesh and possibly an engineering unit from Nordic nations, diplomats said.

"With the best will in the world, we're not likely to be able to do that before September," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said. "And so we have to cover all the different aspects, to sustain protection of civilians in Darfur up to September and through September."

From AFP

The Sudanese army denied on Thursday accusations in a leaked UN report that it had used aircraft with UN markings to carry out bombing raids and fly weapons to the western region of Darfur.

"This information is baseless," army spokesman Brigadier General Othman Mohammed al-Aghbach told the official SUNA news agency.

"This type of accusation is unacceptable and can put an end to cooperation with the parties initiating them," Aghbach said, stressing that such practices would be "contrary to the principles of the armed forces."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on Sudan to clarify the accusations after the confidential report containing them was leaked to US newspapers on Wednesday.

The UN chief "views with deep concern the evidence presented to members of the Security Council regarding the flying of arms and heavy weapons into Darfur in violation" of a Security Council resolution, spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

"He is especially troubled by reports that private or national aircraft have been illegally provided with UN markings for military purposes.

"If further substantiated, such actions would be in clear violation of international law and in contravention of the UN's international status."

The United States expressed "real concern" about the report's accusations and warned that they might be factor that could speed up US consideration of sanctions against Sudan.

"It gives cause for real concern about the actions of the Sudanese government in breaking the arms embargo," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

"It's a positive thing that this report is coming out because it is important information that will inform the debate about what diplomatic next steps should be taken concerning Darfur."

Darfur: Recruiting Begins For UN Mission

From VOA

Five countries have offered to supply soldiers and police for a United Nations mission to support a beleaguered African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. From U.N. headquarters, VOA's Peter Heinlein reports diplomats are hoping to have a full support package in operation by September.

Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Sweden and Norway Thursday became the first countries to offer personnel for the planned 3,600 strong U.N. support mission in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region. The U.N. force is to back up a 7,000 strong African Union mission that has struggled to keep peace in a vast area the size of France.

The offers of troops, police and medical units came at a meeting of potential contributing countries at U.N. headquarters. The head of the Africa section of the U.N. peacekeeping office, Dmitry Titov, said he was encouraged by the large number of offers of help. "There was considerable interest. The room was full," he said.

Titov acknowledged that the African Union peacekeeping mission is overmatched in its efforts to bring peace to an area where more than 200,000 people have died in four years of war. He pointed to the deaths of at least seven peacekeepers from the A.U. mission known as AMIS this month.

"AMIS is in dire straits. As put by their force commander, they are struggling valiantly on the ground, but sometimes they are outmaneuvered, outgunned and outperformed. And we see that in casualties," he said.

Titov Thursday said no date has been set for deployment of the U.N. support mission. But Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry, who is president of the Security Council for April, told reporters it will be several months before the force is operational.

"We have to do everything possible to produce the heavy support package on the ground at the earliest date, and that, with the best will in the world, we're not likely to be able to do that before September," he said.

A senior western diplomat said Thursday that even under the most optimistic circumstances, deployment of a 20,000 strong joint African Union-United Nations force peacekeeping force would not be expected until December at the earliest, and probably well into next year.

Darfur: Experts, Activists Urge Bush to Take Stronger Action

From VOA

Experts and activists appearing before a congressional committee have urged President Bush to take stronger action to pressure the Sudanese government to comply with international demands for a 20,000 - strong United Nations and African peacekeeping force for Darfur. VOA's Dan Robinson reports, the calls follow the president's warning to Khartoum that the U.S. will tighten financial and other sanctions if more progress is not forthcoming.

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group says the U.S. must begin a new diplomatic offensive on Darfur, and combine it with planning for possible military steps, such as imposing a no-fly zone in Darfur.

President Bush's special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, has been engaged since his appointment in negotiations with officials and leaders in Khartoum, and with various rebel factions.

Prendergast says this, along with occasional visits by high level officials, such as Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte who visited Darfur recently, is not enough.

He says the president needs "a full-time diplomatic team" working to, among other things, strengthen the Darfur Peace Agreement, address the affects of the Darfur conflict on Chad and Central African Republic, and save the fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the north-south Sudan conflict.

President Bush warned Khartoum this week that the U.S. will tighten sanctions, including blocking dollar transactions, banning Sudanese companies from doing business in the U.S, and targeting specific Sudanese figures known to have had a role in violence against civilians in Darfur.

However, the president agreed to delay implementation of sanctions at the request of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Describing the president's speech as "bark with no bite" Prendergast says financial and legal measures must be accompanied by planning for stronger steps:

"While we are escalating on the legal and financial measures, we need to plan the military measures," said John Prendergast. "It is very grave to talk about a no-fly zone, it is an act of war because it would involve destroying the air force of the Sudanese regime, we may well need to do that. I think we ought to try these other instruments first, very rapidly, while we plan a credible military effort."

Tom Lantos, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, supports establishment of a no-fly zone to stop Khartoum government aircraft from attacking civilians in Darfur.

Lantos says Khartoum's agreement to allow a 3,000 - strong U.N. force join African Union peacekeepers is a sign of progress, but calls the more substantial deployment sought by the international community essential.

Referring to President Bush's decision to delay tightening of sanctions, the lawmaker had this message:

"I want to serve notice on the President of the United States that while we can go along with two or three weeks of delay, this committee and this Congress will not rest any longer and we are demanding action," said Lantos.

Meanwhile, Alex de Waal, director of the Social Science Research Council at Harvard University, says the international community must act to strengthen the Darfur Peace Agreement, implementation of which he describes as "farcical", as well as the wider Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Sudan:

"A Darfur Peace Agreement only makes sense if there is a comprehensive peace agreement that is working and has the confidence of the Sudanese people," noted Alex de Waal. "If the Darfurians see the CPA as a ceiling on their ambition, or worse still as a sinking ship, they have absolutely no reason to join it."

At Thursday's hearing, Mia Farrow, actress and Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, said that while non-government aid organizations are managing to save lives in Darfur, despite obstacles from Khartoum, the situation is precarious:

"It is true that they are sustaining the lives of more than four million people," she said. "It is also true that they are hanging by the thread."

Speaking in Washington Thursday, John Holmes, U.N. Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, said international pressure must be increased not only on Khartoum, but various rebel movements to pave the way for proper deployment of peacekeeping forces.

"We do need effective international pressure," said John Holmes. "And we need, I think what would be really helpful, is to have a unified international drive to this, so that it's not distracted by internal divisions, and I'm not going to single out any countries. You all know what I'm talking about. But I think it would be very helpful if we could have a little bit more of a unified position within the Security Council on some of these issues."

Holmes called for a new diplomatic push during the delay that President Bush agreed to at the request of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Darfur: Sudan Defiant on Threat of Sanctions

From the AP

Sudan has dismissed as unjustifiable the threat of slapping new sanctions because of the Darfur conflict, vowing to do everything it can to protect what it sees as its national security.

Britain and the United States said this week they would propose the sanctions after a confidential U.N. report charged that the Khartoum government has been flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur in violation of Security Council resolutions. Russia, China and South Africa are opposed to any new sanctions.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday his country will tighten economic sanctions and impose new ones if Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir does not take quick, concrete steps to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

The threat of new sanctions and Sudan's angry reaction to the prospect promise to prolong Khartoum's already long-running quarrel with the international community over the conflict in Darfur in which more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made refugees since 2003.

The latest tussle has dampened the optimism that arose from Sudan's decision Monday to allow the deployment of the U.N.'s so-called "heavy support package" to help the 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur.

It includes 2,250 U.N. troops, 750 international police, and logistical and aviation equipment including six helicopter gunships which Khartoum initially opposed.

"It is hostile and unjustified and seeks to undermine security and stability in the country," Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha said of the threat of new sanctions in remarks carried by the official media Friday.

Another Sudanese official, presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail, singled out Tony Blair for criticism, saying the British prime minister was "disillusioned."

Ismail told a meeting of the ruling National Congress party late Thursday that Blair "must know that if Britain chooses the obstruction option, then Sudan will deal with such a British attitude in a way that will protect its national security."

He did not elaborate.

The comments by the two Sudanese leaders coincided with strong denials by Sudan's army and U.N. ambassador of charges by a U.N. panel that Khartoum was amassing weapons in Darfur using planes painted with the color and emblem of the world body as cover.

"This news is unfounded and baseless," Brig-Gen Othman Muhamed Al-Aghbash, the army spokesman, was quoted as saying Friday by state radio.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem has accused the U.N. panel of trying "to settle political scores" by fabricating claims that his government was conducting bombing raids in Darfur.

He insisted Thursday that photos in the panel's report of a white plane with "UN" marked on its wings were taken in neighboring Chad or other African countries — not in Darfur. And he said attack helicopters and military aircraft capable of dropping bombs that were photographed in Darfur were there legally.

Darfur: New Hope As Gov't Accepts UN Support Package

From IRIN

Sudan's long-awaited agreement to the United Nations-African Union (AU) "Heavy Support package" for Darfur has been cautiously greeted by the international community, but both the UN and AU admit that the task of setting up the operation has just begun.

"The Heavy Support package, as its name indicates, is not the robust force Darfur needs," said UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno after a meeting with AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare this week. "It is a support package to lay the ground for a future robust force."

The current AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) force of 7,000 deployed in the region is understaffed and underfunded, creating a crucial need for improved security for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps and aid workers. AMIS has also come under attack from unknown gunmen and lost seven men in April. It now plans to establish two battalions to protect its men and the upcoming support package.

"This is going to be critical to the Heavy Support package in view of the deteriorating situation in several places in Darfur because these kinds of enablers [and] resources, including civilian personnel, need to have security," said Guehenno.

The package is the second part of a three-step operation consisting of a Light Support package, a Heavy Support package, and an AU-UN Hybrid force; and primarily aims to aid AMIS.

Tuesday's agreement with the Sudanese government allows the UN to continue planning for the US $289.9 million Heavy Support package in order to ensure its deployment in the months ahead.

The package will include a signals unit, communications unit, and logistics staff who will be deployed as part of the 2,250 military personnel. No infantry will be deployed, but the personnel include helicopter pilots, and military tactical staff, among others.

Currently, the UN is holding meetings with troop-contributing countries to determine who would be willing to send personnel to Darfur.

"The troops should be predominantly African," said Konare. "If this is not possible, we will look - with the approval of the Sudanese government - outside the continent."

A contingent of 301 police officers will be deployed, along with 1,136 civilian personnel to work on human rights issues, humanitarian affairs and civilian logistics, among other proposals. But only 150 civilian workers will be international staff.

All Light Support and Heavy Support UN-supplied workers will wear a blue beret with a distinguishing green armband, according to AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, said Jinnit. The blue and green represent the UN and AU, respectively. "This is another story of course when you reach the hybrid operation," he said.

The $21 million Light Support package has almost been completed, with a logistics, personnel, equipment, and humanitarian aid component. Eighty percent of all personnel have been recruited or identified - 105 military specialists and 30 police, according to a senior UN official.

But much more work lies ahead in the next few months that is critical to the success of both the current AU operation and the proposed UN support package. According to UN officials, the goal is to free up AMIS troops so they can carry out their mandate; but support needs to be given as soon as possible.

In order to place two more AMIS security battalions on the ground, funding must be forthcoming, according to Jinnit, especially because six security battalions were approved in September last year, but none have been placed due to lack of funds.

"Let's be honest. Without any sustainable financing, this will not be as sustainable as expected. Really, how can countries volunteer troops when they see that those they send are not able to survive financially?" an exasperated Konare said to reporters.

Tuesday's announcement by the Sudanese comes after months of disagreement
over proposals to boost international peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. Continued cooperation is essential for the success of the operations. For example, in order to accommodate more people and troops, the government will have to provide land and water resources for camps to be built.

Diplomats in New York are, however, optimistic that the transition from the Light package to Heavy package will pave the way for the estimated 20,000-strong Hybrid force, the most controversial part of the plan for the Sudanese government

"You never know; we are talking about the situation today," Congolese Ambassador to the UN Basile Ikouebe told IRIN. "If you have to wait six months before the Hybrid operation can take place, it will be impossible to determine what will happen on the ground in the meantime. But it is a good step."

Darfur: Sudan Vows to 'Fight Any Forced Entry'

From Gulf News

In a show of bravado, the Sudanese Defence Minister said the country will frustrate the nefarious designs of the United States, some Western countries and the Israelis from turning it into another Iraq.

Abdul Rahim Mohammad Hussain said if the Americans or Europeans decide unilaterally to send forces into Sudan and if it comes to that, "we will fight it, be it the Americans or Europeans. We will fight it".

Speaking to Gulf News yesterday evening at his office, Hussain said because of the tremendous potential of a united Sudan which is rich in natural resources, and of late has struck vast quantities of oil reserves, attracting foreign investments from China, Malaysia, India among others, "the United States, European countries and Israel want to destroy and divide Sudan [into] five countries - an independent Darfur, the South, the East, the Nubian State and Central Sudan".

The reason, he said: "They think we don't deserve this potential."

On the pretext of a "humanitarian" crisis in Darfur, he said these countries are trying to create a situation similar to the one that was created before the invasion of Iraq on the false premise that the Iraqi regime was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. "Have they found those weapons and what have they done to Iraq now?" he asked.

Hussain said Sudan is bound by the terms of the Security and Peace Council of the African Union (AU) and as per AU, it has fulfilled all its obligations signed under the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA).

"In DPA, there is no provision for UN forces, but despite that we have agreed to allow a limited number of UN military helicopters and troops under the command of the AU forces.

"When we met these conditions - the so-called first stage and second stage - and when China, South Africa, Qatar and Congo told the West that they should welcome what Sudan has done, the United States and Britain have come out with another conspiracy - a third stage."

According to him, what is now required is funding for the AU troops, and not American rhetoric about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

There are a number of African countries who are ready to send their troops to Sudan but cannot do so because of the lack of funds, he said.

When asked if the United States and its allies are trying to impose democracy in Sudan, the defence minister said democracy was not the issue, the issue is the resources. The other thing is the interest of the Israelis and the Zionists.

"They have an interest in South Sudan. Their interest is water and South Sudan has the potential to increase the water flow in the river Nile. We have five schemes in the south which can increase the water level.

"One of the states is Jungli - it alone can generate around 4 billion cubic metres of water. That is why the Jewish state wants an independent south so that the water from the south can flow through the river Nile and into Israel and so forth," Hussain said.

He added that Sudan is aware of the Jewish conspiracy since 1955 when the first rebellion took place in the south and the group of rebels was trained in Israel under the supervision of the Mossad.

"Have they found those weapons and what have they done to Iraq now?"

Sudan has denied UN accusations of violating a UN arms embargo by flying weapons into Darfur in breach of UN Security Council Resolutions, BBC said.

Sudan's envoy to the UN, Abdul Mahmoud Abdul Haleem, said the allegations were "a lie" and that military assets were simply being moved around the country.

Abdul Mahmoud Abdul Haleem told the BBC: "According to the comprehensive peace agreement signed [after the civil war in the South] between the Sudanese government and SPLM, we have to move our military assets and aircraft and all assets from the South to other regions in the country.

"We are moving these military assets to their respective places. We are not using these aircraft for any military function in Darfur."

But a New York Times journalist who has seen a leaked copy of the UN report said there is no doubt about the evidence.

"One thing is [clear with] pictures that appeared with the report that we actually published in the New York Times [yesterday]," Warren Hoge told the BBC World Service's World Today programme.

"There are very clear pictures of planes painted white, and also with the UN designation on the left-hand wing of one of the planes. And also a good deal of testimony from the investigators who compiled the report.

"It's the credibility of the United Nations versus the credibility of the Sudanese authorities - and I think on that basis the United Nations report looks pretty good."

The report was compiled by a five-person panel for the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against Sudan.

Darfur: Government Aircraft Bomb Village

I assume that this is a separate attack from the one on Tuesday. As I noted then, Khartoum has routinely launched attacks whenever there appears to have been any sort of breakthrough or concession - From Reuters

A Sudanese rebel group said government aircraft destroyed a village in northern Darfur in an air strike on Thursday, inflicting casualties.

An army spokesman said he was not aware of such an attack.

Ibrahim al-Helu, a commander in the Sudan Liberation Army rebel faction, said the air strike totally destroyed the village of Jemmeiza.

"There are casualties but darkness is making it difficult to reach them or know their number," he told Reuters by telephone.

"A lot of civilians have fled the village. Some have gone missing," he said.

Darfur: Too Few,Too Late?

From the Economist

AFTER months of huffy hesitation and evasion, Sudan's government at last agreed this week to let some 3,000 UN peacekeepers, replete with helicopter gunships, into its ravaged western region of Darfur. The UN's blue helmets are to bolster an ineffectual force of 7,000 troops now on the ground under the aegis of the African Union (AU). The UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, says he hopes the Sudanese government in Khartoum may yet allow the peacekeeping mission to be beefed up a lot more, bringing its strength up to 22,000 soldiers and police under a “hybrid” UN and AU command. But Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, shows no sign of agreeing to such an increase.

This week's deal will have no immediate impact on the misery in Darfur, where at least 200,000 have been killed and 2m displaced since 2003 in fighting that has ranged over scrubland the size of France. But it is a start. If a small but robust UN force proves more effective, pressure may grow on Mr Bashir to let in a bigger force.

A key factor in persuading him to relent was an apparent change in the attitude of China, which had hitherto prevented any real pressure being put on Sudan; most of Sudan's oil goes to China, which provides Sudan's government with most of its arms and much of its sorely needed investment in infrastructure. The Chinese government may have been rattled by a campaign launched in America calling for a boycott of next year's Beijing Olympic Games and dubbing them “the Genocide Olympics”.

China has blithely ignored accusations that it is indirectly to blame for letting the Darfur carnage continue. But when the Olympics are brought into the equation, it becomes twitchier. A letter to China's authorities from Steven Spielberg, the American film director, urging them to help alleviate the suffering in Darfur may have forced the issue. Mr Spielberg is advising on the Olympic ceremonies, heralded as China's coming-out party. He may have feared being labelled a hard-hearted propagandist, much as Leni Riefenstahl was damned for her photographic choreography of the Nazis' Berlin Olympics of 1936.

Whether or not his letter had an effect, China's president, Hu Jintao, promptly sent a senior official to Sudan—and a deal was struck. No one is confident that Mr Bashir will stick to it. He has often wriggled out of agreements before. The American administration remains particularly sceptical. Its relations with Khartoum will improve, it says, only when things in Darfur improve. President Bush said this week he would press for sterner sanctions if Sudan failed to co-operate fully. But Mr Bashir is banking on America's bark being worse than its bite, because he knows he is still valued, if only by the CIA, as an American ally in the so-called war on terror.

It is unclear, in any case, how much difference the dispatch of 3,000 UN troops to Darfur will make. For a start, they are not due to arrive until October—or later, if the Sudanese drag their feet again. It is even less certain that Mr Bashir will let the much bigger hybrid UN-AU force be built up. And even if he did, there is no knowing if it would be effective.

Few countries are willing or able to provide the right sort of troops for the job: special forces and paratroops, as well as medical units and engineers. Fewer still, apart from the United States, have the needed airlift capacity. Sudan insists that the UN force must have an African face. But few African countries have the military clout; the best are overstretched. By the by, if the AU were persuaded to bolster its force in Sudan, that would probably end any serious effort to stiffen the backbone of its under-sized force now struggling against the odds to keep the peace in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

Even if peacekeepers do eventually reach Darfur in meaningful force, the region may be overwhelmed by problems of nature. The recent carnage apart, the number of people and cattle has risen much faster than their ability to sustain themselves, even in peacetime. Aid agencies now feed almost half the population. Over the years, as rainfall has declined and crops have become less bountiful, a gross dependency has set in. It is uncertain whether the people of Darfur will ever be able to look after themselves again.

Darfur: U.N. Sought Delay in Sanctions/Egypt, Russia, China Warn Against Sanctions/Sudan Slams "Contempt" for UN

Sudan, without a hint of irony, slams US/UK threats of sanctions by saying they show "real contempt for the United Nations and regional organisations." This comes from the same regime that is flagrantly violating the UN arms embargo because it "does not feel obliged to request permission in advance from the Security Council."

From the AP

President Bush was poised to slap tough new U.S. sanctions on Sudan this week for failing to halt bloodshed in Darfur, but held off after direct appeals from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, officials said Thursday.

Bush planned to unveil the measures in an address at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington on Wednesday and aides had told Darfur advocacy groups a day earlier they could expect an announcement to that effect, the officials said.

Instead, he delivered a last warning to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, telling him he must take quick, concrete steps to ease the situation in Darfur or face the sanctions, which he outlined in detail but stopped short of actually imposing.

Officials said initial drafts of Bush's speech contained harsher language that was modified after two phone calls between Ban and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, first on Tuesday and then just before the address on Wednesday.

"The speech changed as a result of those conversations," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

"He (Ban) did make an appeal to give diplomacy a little more time and we felt it was important to allow the secretary general to pursue something he thought was important and worthwhile to pursue," McCormack told reporters.

Darfur advocates expressed surprise and dismay with Bush's revised speech. Some officials maintained the administration had been hostile to Ban's request and went along only reluctantly.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was describing internal deliberations, said many in the administration thought Ban's suggestion was a "lousy idea," but that Washington did not want to undermine the U.N. chief and deferred to him.

Ban argued to Rice that al-Bashir's recent decision to allow parts of a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur was "diplomatically promising and perhaps portended some future action" toward full acceptance of the mission, McCormack said.

"I guess we're going to put that to the test," he said, adding that the United States remained deeply skeptical about Khartoum's intentions in Darfur, particularly with its continued support for militia blamed for much of the violence.

Deployment of the peacekeepers to take over from a cash-strapped and understaffed African Union force is deemed key to stabilizing the troubled region where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in a four-year conflict.

Al-Bashir's government repeatedly has given contradictory signals about the hybrid mission, including to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte who visited Khartoum and Darfur earlier this week, officials said.

Negroponte reported directly back to Bush after his meetings in Sudan, telling the president he saw no reason for new optimism on the matter, officials said.

Thus, the speech that Bush eventually delivered was still blunt in tone, they said.

"The world needs to act," Bush said. "If President al-Bashir does not meet his obligations, the United States of America will act. It is evil we're now seeing in Sudan and we're not going to back down."

But advocacy groups and lawmakers criticized the speech for not going far enough and failing to immediately enact sanctions or set a specific timeline for compliance with international demands.

McCormack insisted Thursday that al-Bashir had only "weeks" to comply or be hit with the new U.S. sanctions and a concerted push for more U.N. sanctions in the Security Council.

Among the actions Bush warned Sudan about were targeted sanctions against specific Sudanese people and businesses and blocking the government's dollar transactions within the U.S. financial system.

The United States will also be pushing new U.N. measures, including an expanded arms embargo on Sudan and prohibiting Sudan's government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur, he said.

From VOA

Egypt has warned the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council not to impose new sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in troubled Darfur.

The warning comes a day after President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair - speaking separately - threatened more sanctions in remarks criticizing the Sudanese government.

In a statement Thursday, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had sent urgent messages to the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia. He said the messages stressed the need for improved dialogue with Sudan instead of new sanctions.

He also said the international community should welcome Sudan's decision on Monday to accept a U.N. support package for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. That package will send some 3,000 U.N. personnel to the war-torn region.

Russia and China voiced objections to new sanctions on Wednesday.

From AFP

Sudan on Thursday said that threats of sanctions by London and Washington were a sign of "contempt" for the United Nations which had just praised Khartoum's acceptance of UN troops in Darfur.

"The calls by the United Sates and Britain for sanctions... show