British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited the conflict-ravaged region of Darfur yesterday to assess whether the Sudanese government is fulfilling its pledge to tackle what the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The UN Security Council has given Khartoum until Aug. 30 to disarm Arab militias known as janjaweed, who are blamed for terrorizing black African farmers, or face economic and diplomatic sanctions. More than 30,000 people have been killed and 1.4 million forced to flee their homes in the crisis.
Straw, who was received yesterday by North Darfur Governor Osman Youssif Kabir at Al-Fasher airport, was planning to visit the nearby Abu Shouk refugee camp, a sprawling camp set in desert and scrubland about 2km from the provincial northern capital of al-Fasher.
Although well organized with waterpoints, latrines and some medical facilities, aid agencies say the camp has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the Darfur region. They also report that some Sudanese police responsible for protecting the refugees are sexually exploiting women in the camps.
Straw, who met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail late Monday in Khartoum, the capital, said aid agencies were reporting "considerable improvement in humanitarian access" to Darfur, a western region the size of France that is dotted with 147 refugee camps.
He said he also had secured a pledge from Ismail to grant visas to British representatives of the human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, so far barred from the region.
Sudan insists it is working with the international community to ease the crisis and Ismail said late Monday that 200 janjaweed had been arrested and were being tried in batches in Darfur.
A British official who has been on 12 patrols since July 28 with an African Union monitoring force in western Darfur said, however, that the janjaweed were still acting with impunity.
"My assessment of what we have seen so far is that this is bandit country where the Janjaweed are doing what they want, where they want and when they want to non-Arabs," said the official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.
Once black African farmers have been forced off their land, militiamen continue to terrorize them to ensure they stayed in camps, the official said.
"Stealing, beating and sexual molestation of women" is common, he said. However, he said he'd seen no evidence the government had backed up the militias with aerial bomb attacks since an April 8 ceasefire.
African rebels rose against the government in February last year, claiming discrimination in the distribution of scarce resources in the western provinces. UN officials accuse the government of trying to crush the revolt by backing a scorched earth policy carried out by the janjaweed.
Khartoum has long denied such accusations, although according to the UN, it acknowledged last week that it has "control" over some janjaweed fighters and has promised in the coming week to give the world body a list of militants suspected of involvement in the bloodshed.
During his visit, Straw has said his government is ready to help finance a greatly enlarged African Union force to monitor Darfur.
The African Union has 80 observers in Darfur, protected by 150 Rwandan troops, to monitor the April ceasefire. British officials said an AU plan taking shape envisages as many as 1,000 observers and 3,000 troops to monitor the region.
"The government of Sudan may need more assistance from the AU, and it's our job to facilitate it," said Straw, who was planning to meet with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir during his visit to Sudan.
Britain already has provided ?2 million (US$3.6 million) to support the AU mission and has pledged a further ?750,000 (US$1.4 million) for commercial charter planes to transport Nigerian troops to Darfur, the first of whom are expected to arrive later this week. Britain also will provide 6,000 ration packs for the AU mission.
However, at Darfur peace talks being held in Abuja, Nigeria, a senior Sudanese official rejected a proposal floated by the African Union to send nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to Darfur.
"Nobody agreed about that," Sudan's Agriculture Minister, Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad, said Monday.
"The security role is the role of the government of Sudan and its security forces," he said. However, he indicated Sudan might later consider an expanded AU role: "If there's a need, it will be discussed."
Late Monday, Ismail reiterated Sudan's pledge to work with the international community to make the Darfur situation "as normal as possible."
The Sudanese minister also insisted his government had made progress in tackling the crisis and improving security for the refugees. He said it was working closely with the African Union monitors.
Straw was expected to encourage the South African government to provide military assistance when he visits Cape Town on Wednesday.
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