Sudanese authorities on Saturday rejected the US Congress' declaration that the violence in Sudan's Darfur region constitutes genocide.
The US Senate and House of Representatives voted unanimously on Thursday for resolutions urging US leaders and the international community to begin "calling the atrocities being committed in Darfur by their rightful name: genocide."
Al-Tigani al-Fadhil, undersecretary at the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Khartoum, said that the congressional resolutions were biased, unfair and far from the truth. He said that the genocide allegations both exacerbate the Darfur conflict in western Sudan and undermine efforts by the African Union to head off the humanitarian crisis in the region.
Al-Fadhil vowed that his government would mount an anti-US campaign over Darfur to explain Khartoum's position to the relevant regional and international institutions.
He warned that further steps on Darfur by the international community would undermine the ongoing peace process in Sudan's long-running civil war.
US President George W. Bush on Friday demanded that the Khartoum regime halt atrocities by government-linked Janjaweed Arab militias against black African tribes in Darfur, but he stopped short of calling the conflict genocide. The US State Department is assembling evidence on the Darfur violence but has not asserted that the crisis meets technical definitions of genocide.
By widespread estimates, 30,000 Darfur civilians have been killed, more than 130,000 ref-ugees have sought sanctuary in neighboring Chad, and more than 1 million Darfur people fleeing the violence are displaced within Sudan.
Sudan's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ibrahim Mahmoud, said on Saturday that his ministry had spent US$2 million on medical needs in Darfur and sent 250 medical staff to alleviate health conditions as the rainy season affects western Sudan.
Reports have grown in the last week of widespread disease due to unhygienic conditions in Darfur. The Sudanese government is still insisting that conditions have improved for internal refugees in the region.
Mahmoud said that the Musa refugee camp in the southern Darfur town of Nyala had been evacuated, with 4,390 displaced families voluntarily returning to their original homes in northern Darfur. He also declared western Darfur free of rebels, whose actions may have precipitated the Janjaweed militia attacks.
The Sudanese government demanded that the international community condemn Darfur rebels for their own humanitarian violations and asked the world to put pressure on the rebel groups.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS