Sudan says it’s fully cooperating on Darfur crisis

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s foreign minister said Sunday that his government had cooperated fully with international demands to improve the situation in the Darfur region, just days before U.N. officials will examine whether the country has made adequate progress in disarming marauding Arab militias.

The minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, also dismissed U.N. reports that 30,000 refugees wanted to flee Darfur into Chad because of poor security.

With reports circulating that most U.N. Security Council members have no stomach for tough measures such as sanctions, the foreign minister said he was confident the United Nations would next week find that Sudan had done all it could.

“We are all keen to apply the U.N. plan, because the secretary-general has approved it and it will be reassessed next week. I am sure the Security Council will announce that there is total cooperation from the Sudanese government to achieve peace,” he said Sunday, adding that Darfur had been calm in recent weeks.

At a news conference Sunday in Khartoum, Ismail and another government official provided details about progress on safe areas for internally displaced persons and deployment of police around those areas. But they offered no details about any program to disarm the Arab militias, which is seen by U.N. officials as the real key to improving security in Darfur.

On Thursday, the Joint Implementation Mission, involving U.N. and Sudanese government officials, will travel to Darfur for three days to report on progress made by Sudan on disarming the militias and improving security. According to the latest U.N. situation report, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, 48 percent of whom are not getting food relief.

Sudan has until Aug. 30 to show the Security Council it is serious about disarming Arab militias responsible for atrocities in Darfur, or it could face unspecified measures.

Ismail said he did not think the worst-case scenario – hich he put as international military intervention – would occur. There has been no international threat of military intervention, only of unspecified measures if Sudan fails to comply, implying the possibility of sanctions.

As the world’s worst humanitarian crisis has unfolded in Darfur, Sudanese officials have repeatedly glossed over the atrocities, even as Arab militias rampaged, killing, setting people alight, raping, burning villages, stealing stock and hunting people from their land – attacks the U.S. Congress has labeled genocide.

The Sudanese government has denied the reports of Human Rights Watch and humanitarian organizations that they used Arab militias as a proxy force to subdue a rebellion in Darfur by two groups early last year. However, last week the government acknowledged to U.N. officials it controlled some of the militias.

The rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army, are from the black African tribal pastoralist populations that have long been in conflict with Arab herdsmen over land. They rebelled in early 2003 complaining of discrimination against their populations by the Khartoum government. The Arab militias – often described as the “janjaweed” – retaliated with a terror campaign against civilian villages.