Global

Reuters Thu Oct 7, 2004 UN Panel to Look Into Genocide in Sudan's Darfur By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 (Reuters) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan named a five-member panel on Thursday led by Italian judge Antonio Cassese to investigate whether genocide has taken place in Sudan's Darfur region. Created at the request of the U.N. Security Council in a U.S.-drafted resolution, the commission will also look into reports of widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the western Sudanese area. Panel members agreed to submit their findings in three months to Annan, who would then report to the council, a U.N. spokeswoman said. More than 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes and up to 50,000 killed by fighting in Darfur since a rebellion broke out in February 2003, according to the United Nations, which calls the area the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The U.S. government believes genocide is taking place in Darfur, and two top U.N. human rights watchdogs told the council this month war crimes had probably occurred on "a large and systematic scale" there. The two were Argentine Juan Mendez, the special U.N. adviser for the prevention of genocide, and Canadian Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. The Khartoum government blames the violence largely on anti-government rebels, although it has agreed to rein in nomadic Arab militias it is widely believed to have armed. The area's settled African residents accuse the so-called Janjaweed militias of widespread murder and rape and pillaging and torching their villages. Cassese was the first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a court based in The Hague that is looking into suspected war crimes in the Balkans including during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war. Other commission members include Egyptian Mohammed Fayek, secretary-general of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, and Diego Garcia-Sayan, a former Peruvian foreign minister and justice minister. Pakistani Hani Jilani, Annan's special representative on human rights defenders, and Ghanaian Therese Striggner Scott, chairwoman of the Ghana Law Reform Commission, were also named to the commission.

UN News Centre 7 Oct 2004 www.un.org/News/ Annan appoints five-member panel to probe possible genocide in Darfur, Sudan Kofi Annan (centre) with four commission members 7 October 2004 – Secretary-General Kofi Annan today announced the formal establishment of a commission of inquiry to determine whether acts of genocide have occurred in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, selecting an Italian judge and professor to lead the probe. The five-member commission will also investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights by all parties in Darfur, where Janjaweed militias stand accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers after local rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese Government. Mr. Annan set up the inquiry after the Security Council requested he do so in a resolution adopted last month on the humanitarian and security crises engulfing Darfur, a vast and impoverished region in western Sudan. About 1.45 million people are internally displaced within Darfur and another 200,000 are living as refugees in neighbouring Chad, and UN officials have described the situation as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Under the Security Council resolution, the commission is also mandated to identify the perpetrators of any acts of genocide “with a view to ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.” Prof. Antonio Cassese of Italy, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), will be the commission’s chairman. Professor Cassese has taught international law in Italy and the United Kingdom and also served on human rights committees for the Council of Europe. The other members are Diego Garcia-Sayán of Peru, Mohammed Fayek of Egypt, Hina Jilani of Pakistan and Thérese Striggner Scott of Ghana. Dumisa Ntsebeza of South Africa will act as Executive Director, heading the technical team that supports the commission. Mr. Garcia-Sayán is a former Foreign Affairs and Justice Minister of Peru, a legal professor for nearly 20 years and a UN negotiator during the Guatemalan peace talks in the early 1990s. Mr. Fayek is Secretary-General of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization (NGO) and has served as both a minister and as a presidential adviser during his time in the Egyptian parliament. Ms. Jilani has been the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders since August 2000. She has a long record as a human rights lawyer and activist in Pakistan and started the country’s first firm of women lawyers in 1980. Mrs. Striggner Scott, currently chair of Ghana’s Law Reform Commission, has worked as a High Court judge in Ghana and Zimbabwe and has also been an ambassador for her country during a long diplomatic career. The commission has three months to complete its work and report back to Mr. Annan, and the five members are expected to leave shortly for Sudan.

www.chinaview.cn 8 Oct 2004 UN appoints panel to investigate alleged atrocities in west Sudan 2004-10-08 06:25:24 UNTIED NATIONS, Oct. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed on Thursday an independent panel to investigate reported serious human rights violations in Darfur, west Sudan, and to determine whether or not acts of genocide have occurred in the region. The International Commission of Inquiry will be chaired by Italian judge Antonio Cassese, the first president of the UN-backed international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters. The panel, created as required by a resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on Sept. 18, will comprise four other members former Peruvian Justice Minister Diego Garcia-Sayan, Pakistani lawyer Hina Jilani, Ghanaian judge Therese Striggner Scott and Egyptian human rights expert Mohammed Fayek. South African human rights lawyer Dumisa Ntsebeza will serve asexecutive director heading a technical team supporting the commission. Some members of the commission will meet with Annan later on Thursday and the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will provide support to the panel, Eckhard said. Darfur, an impoverished region the size of France, grabbed global attention early this year after UN officials reported a serious humanitarian crisis in the region, where two rebel forces formed by local settled tribes have fought against the government since February 2003. UN estimates said the conflict has left at least 30,000 people dead and some 1.2 million others internally displaced. Another 200,000 people fled to neighboring Chad. A militia group, known as the Janjaweed and drawn from local nomadic tribes which have long competed for water and land resources with the settlers, has been accused of launching brutal attacks against settled tribes with the connivance of the government. But the government denied any links with the Janjaweed, labeling it as an outlaw group composed of robbers and bandits. Khartoum also questioned the UN-estimated death toll and put its own estimate at no more than 5,000. The US administration declared the violence in Darfur as genocide last month. But the declaration got little active support from other countries.

Africa

The Monitor (Kampala) NEWS October 19, 2004 Posted to the web October 18, 2004 'Criminals Must Plead to Get Amnesty' By Ibrahim Kasita Kampala Criminals should first confess to specific crimes before they are pardoned, MPs have proposed. They say confessing would create accountability in the public eye. MPs made the proposals at a seminar by the Parliamentarians for Global Action on the theme 'Security Sector Reform' in Kampala on Thursday. They recommended that victims should retain the right to sue a criminal even though the Amnesty Law protects him. The seminar attracted legislators from Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania and Uganda. The group has 1,350 members' worldwide. The seminar suggested that countries should follow up cases referred to the International Criminal Court. " The Amnesty Law does not stop an individual from pursuing a case with the ICC even if the offender has been pardoned," the Solicitor General, Mr Lucian Tibaruha. Parliamentarians were concerned that most of the atrocities committed by national armies against civilians in conflict regions go unpunished. MPs urged warring factions to adopt a spirit of openness for peace to prevail in troubled regions. They also urged governments to wipe out corruption and facilitate the judiciary for justice to prevail. They recommended that there is a need to fund all parties and strengthen the Electoral Commission to conduct free and fair elections. They urged the government to demilitarise politics and to accept defeat in an election to restore trust and confidence in the population. They said civil society must maintain pressure on decision makers to make policies that affect the population positively to eradicate poverty.

ICRC 25 Oct 2004 ICRC News 04/128 Promoting international humanitarian law in Africa The ICRC continues its efforts to raise awareness and understanding of international humanitarian law across Africa. In the continent’s most populous nation Nigeria, for example, the organization recently organized two events in conjunction with federal authorities. One was a workshop for some 50 senior civil servants to inform them of what is being done to implement humanitarian law treaties in the country. The other was a course for the Nigerian police on human rights law, various policing concepts, law enforcement, protection of vulnerable groups, and command and management. Meanwhile, in one of Africa's more difficult situations – Burundi – the ICRC has been arranging a series of seminars on international humanitarian and human rights law for army and police officers. Three such events have been organized in the past two weeks for nearly 90 mid-ranking officials and trainees of the armed and police forces. These presentations are carried out by experienced delegates who themselves have served as armed forces and police officers. They constitute one of the ICRC’s main activities the world over. For further information please contact: Ashot Astabatsyan, ICRC Abuja, tel. +234 9 413 5947 or +234 9 413 3683 Elizabeth Twinch / Nicolas Vako, ICRC Bujumbura, tel. +257 212865 or +257 212908 Marco Jiménez, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++41 79 217 3217

IRIN 29 Oct 2004 Sudan: AU boosts troop levels in Darfur [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ADDIS ABABA, 29 October (IRIN) - The African Union (AU) began boosting its peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region on Friday with the arrival of 50 Nigerian troops. A further 237 soldiers from Rwanda are expected to arrive on Saturday to help try and end violence that has driven more than 1.5 million people from their homes, the AU said. "More troops from Nigeria and from other African countries are expected to be deployed in the following days," the AU said in a statement from its headquarters in Addis Ababa. The 53-nation AU announced earlier in October that it would boost its force in Darfur from 390 to 3,320 troops and civilian police. The force will include 450 unarmed military observers, a major increase from the 80 currently deployed there to monitor a shaky ceasefire between two rebel groups fighting government troops and allied militia. An armed security force of 310 troops is protecting the observers. The force will be increased to 2,341. The new mission will also include 815 civilian police officers and 164 civilian staff. The US $220-million (€175 million) one-year operation will be funded mainly by the European Union and the United States. "These new deployments, together with the 310 military personnel from Nigeria and Rwanda that the AU had already sent to Darfur earlier in August, will bring the military component of the African mission in Sudan to 597 troops," the AU added. Darfur's troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and their African farming neighbours over dwindling water and agricultural land. Those tensions erupted into violence in February 2003 when two African-rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen. An estimated 70,000 people have died since the conflict broke out, according to UN figures. Nearly 1.5 million more have fled to refugee camps. American Secretary of State Colin Powell said in July that Sudan's government and allied Arab militia, the Janjawid, had committed acts of genocide against Darfur's non-Arab villagers.

Burundi

AFP 4 Oct 2004 Political tension prompts 400 to flee Burundi for Rwanda BUJUMBURA, Oct 4 (AFP) - More than 400 people have fled Burundi for Rwanda over the last fortnight amid mounting political tension in their home country, officials in Burundi said Monday, adding that most of the refugees were from the traditionally dominant Tutsi minority. "Over the last two weeks, more than 400 people, mostly Tutsi women and children, have fled Bugabira commune (in the northern Kirundo province) for Rwanda," the commune's administrator, Ildephonse Sabushimike, told AFP. Kirundo Governor Philippe Njoni told AFP that another 30 people had left their homes in two other settlements in the province. "They are leaving because of the political atmosphere and also because of incendiary speeches by some politicians about the constitutional referendum and the end of the transition," said Sabushimike. Burundi, where an ethnic civil war simmers on into its eleventh year, is soon to hold a referendum on a new basic law outlining the distribution of power between the Tutsis and the Hutu majority, a constitution that is meant to cap a three-year interim administration. A series of elections is also due to be held shortly. The transition process is not going smoothly, however, and Burundi's 10 most important Tutsi political parties have rejected the draft constitution on the table and have taken their case to have it scrapped to the constitutional court, warning that the text failed to take into account the concerns of the Tutsi community. Burundi's modern history is scarred by several inter-ethnic massacres. More than 300,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which began in 1993 when armed Hutu groups rose up against an army and government then dominated by Tutsis.

IRIN 4 Oct 2004 Burundi: MP's plea over stranded Batwa families [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] BUJUMBURA, 4 October (IRIN) - A group of families from the Batwa minority ethnic group in Burundi have nowhere to go after their homes were burnt on 16 September, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the community told IRIN on Monday. The MP for Gitega, Liberate Nicayenzi, blamed the local administration for the burning of 50 houses at Rwitonga in Busoni Commune of Kirundo Province, northern Burundi. Nicayenzi said administrative officials, including the Kirundo governor, commander of the district and the zone's chief, "were watching" as the houses were set ablaze. Nicayenzi said she sent a protest letter to President Domitien Ndayizeye following the action, but she had not received a response, so far. The administration in Busoni does not deny Nicayenzi's claims, but justifies the act by saying residents had been given several warnings to vacate the area. They had built their homes on natural reserve land. According to local officials who requested anonymity, the Batwa community was not the only target, as other homes of Hutu families were also destroyed. The officials claimed most of the affected families owned other parcels of land elsewhere, but preferred to live in Busoni because of the land's fertility. Nicayenzi said the Batwa whose homes were destroyed were still waiting for help from the administration. She added that alternative plots they had been offered at a former mining site were unsuitable for human habitation. Former President Pierre Buyoya granted the Batwa the land in 1998. Other communities later joined the Batwa families in settling in the area. Nicayenzi told IRIN she failed to understand the evacuation, as many of the Batwa had already acquired land ownership.

Xinhua 11 Oct 2004 Over 1,100 Burundians flee to Rwanda amid mounting tensions KIGALI, Oct 11, 2004 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Rwandan State Minister of Foreign Affairs Protaise Mitali has confirmed here that over 1,100 Burundian refugees crossed to Rwanda Monday morning amid mounting tensions that could break into a civil war before or after the general elections slated late this year. The refugees who left their home in Burundi's Bugabira area claimed to be threatened by their fellow citizens who warned to kill them if the minority Tutsi wins the elections. Some Hutu ethnic people have been supported and armed by faction parties which have in the past few days launched attacks to destabilize them, a Burundian refugee said. If these refugees keep coming in influx, then the Rwandan government will have to set up other new camps, Mitali said, adding that the refugees are currently in two camps of Ngenda in Kigali and Gikonko in Butare where they found another 700 compatriots. Burundi, a tiny central country where the Hutus make up 85 percent of its population whereas the Tutsis, 14 percent, is emerging from its civil war fueled by rivalry between the country' s majority Hutus and minority Tutsis and its three-year transition to democratic rule is set to end on Oct. 31 this year. Yet the country's political groups have not yet fully agreed upon the power-sharing plan brokered by South Africa's deputy president. Under the plan drawn by the chief mediator for Burundian peace process Jacob Zuma, the first president of Burundi's post- transitional era will have to be elected by a two-thirds majority of the combined upper and lower houses of parliament. The two vice presidents will be drawn from different tribes and political parties. The upper house (senate) will have equal numbers of Hutus and Tutsis plus three senators from the Twa (pygmy) tribe while the lower house (national assembly) will be composed of 60 percent of Hutus and 40 percent of Tutsis. So far, some 20 political groups in Burundi have agreed upon the power-sharing plan whereas eight to nine groups are still opposed to it in fear of whether the Tutsi-dominated parties can take control of 40 percent of the national assembly seats and 40 percent of the cabinet's ministerial posts, and whether the sole vice president as the Tutsi parties have proposed will have the right to veto the decisions of the president. Asked if Burundi could honor the earlier date set for elections, Mitali said they still have a lot of challenges which include mending a constitution and setting laws that would rule the election college. Meanwhile, Volker, an official from the Office of United Nations High Commissioner on Refugee (UNHCR), said on Monday they have coordinated with the Rwandan government to find out how the refugees would be treated. The refugees are in fear of their security and that's why they had to run in save of their lives, he said. However, the refugees called on the international community to intervene and easy the tension.

Reuters 29 Oct 2004 Burundi criticises UN report on refugee massacre 29 Oct 2004 17:43:08 GMT Source: Reuters BUJUMBURA, Oct 29 ( Reuters) - Burundi's government on Friday criticised a United Nations report on the Aug. 13 massacre of 160 Congolese refugees in Burundi, calling it ignorant of the available evidence. Attackers hacked, bludgeoned and burned to death 160 refugees at the desolate Gatumba transit camp, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.N. report said contaminated evidence at the scene made it impossible to identify any perpetrators besides a Hutu rebel group, the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), which earlier claimed responsibility for the massacre. Burundi's minister of foreign affairs, Therence Sinunguruza, said the report failed to identify the other perpetrators of the massacre when there was clear evidence showing a coalition of FNL rebels, Congolese traditional Mai Mai fighters and Rwandan Hutu militia had been responsible. "On the current stage of national inquiries, the attackers who operated were about 750, including 300 FNL rebels, 250 Mai Mai and 200 Rwandan Hutu rebels of FDLR," he said. An FNL participant in the massacre and a top Mai Mai commander in Burundian custody "have clearly indicated how things happened from the preparations, the aims, the reasons, the operations", Sinunguruza said. "The report is much more motivated by political reasons than the search of truth, since the authors of the massacre are well known." Burundi's government is continuing with its investigations and plans to bring those responsible to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, a course the U.N. report urged.

Cote D'Ivoire

IRIN 5 Oct 2004 Cote d'Ivoire: Pro-Gbagbo youths resume protests against French peacekeepers [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ABIDJAN, 5 October (IRIN) - Wielding machetes, hurling stones, firing marbles with catapults and slinging burning tyres, young supporters of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo have resumed their protests against the continued presence of French peacekeeping troops in the divided country. On Tuesday, about 300 members the militia-style youth movement known as the Young Patriots staged a third day of rowdy demonstrations outside the main French military base in Abidjan, ignoring a plea by Gbagbo to stop the violence. The resumption of Young Patriot protests outside the base near Abidjan airport after a gap of three months, comes as political tensions are rising and Cote d'Ivoire's fragile peace process once more appears to be running into quicksand. The latest deal between Gbagbo, the parliamentary opposition parties and rebels occupying the north of the country, signed in the Ghanaian capital Accra on July 30, is coming unstuck. The government has failed to legislate promised political reforms and it is now clear that the rebels will not begin to disarm on 15 October as planned. As in previous times of crisis since a French-brokered peace agreement was signed in January 2003, the 4,000 French troops, stationed alongside 6,000 UN peacekeepers in the world's largest cocoa producer, are coming under attack from Gbagbo supporters. So too are people from northern Cote d'Ivoire and immigrants from other West African countries suspected of sympathising with the rebels. They were the main target of a particularly brutal raid by police and soldiers on Adjame market in Abidjan on 29 September. It provoked a protest from the UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI), which said it was "seriously worried" that human rights violations appeared to have taken place. Many traders were beaten up and had their goods confiscated as the security forces raided the market on the grounds of checking for unlicensed traders and diplomatic sources said some women were raped. Then on Monday the French force said its troops were involved in a clash with machete-wielding youths at the small town of Sikensi, 80 km north of Abidjan, injuring one of them with a rubber bullet fired in self-defence. For the past two weeks, the government's feared Mi-24 helicopter gunships have been making frequent low-level flights over Abidjan, raising fears of renewed violence among the population as a whole, and military road blocks have been stepped up. The unease of the large French expatriate community in the city has meanwhile increased following the murder of a French restaurant owner in the nearby beach resort of Grand Bassam on Sunday. The French consulate said he was shot dead in his own restaurant after being badly beaten up by intruders. Charles Ble Goude, the firebrand leader of the Young Patriots, who according to diplomats has close links with Gbagbo, organised the latest protest demonstrations outside the French base in Abidjan. The immediate focus of his attention this time was last month's arrest of 12 French soldiers accused of stealing money from a bank they were supposed to be guarding in the rebel-held city of Man. On Tuesday, witnesses said French soldiers responded to the Young Patriot protesting outside their Abidjan by firing tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. French military spokesman Henry Aussavy told IRIN that 15 of his men had been slightly injured in the fracas. The violence occurred despite a televised plea for calm by Gbagbo on Monday night. "To all those who want to organise protests in front of the (French base) and in front of the U.N., I am asking them to stay at home," he said. The President issued a further plea for calm at a meeting with his own military commanders and those of the French and UN peacekeeping forces on Tuesday. According to a transcript of the meeting made available to IRIN, Gbagbo said it was time to end the "wild rumours" which had been flying round, an apparent reference to recent talk of a possible coup. This has been partly whipped up by pro-Gbagbo newspapers, such as Note Voie, Le Temps and Le Courier which have recently carried frequent reports about alleged coup plots and assassination plans. Gbagbo put the blame for the latest flare-up on the approach of 15 October, the deadline for the start of disarmament under the terms of the Accra Three agreement. "I believe we shouldn't have a fixation around October 15," he said, according to the transcript of his meeting with the military chiefs. The last round of international peace talks in the Ghanaian capital Accra in July set the mid-October deadline for both rebels and militias to start handing over their weapons and also called on Gbagbo's ruling party to push through long-delayed political reforms, aimed at paving the way for disarmament. The reforms are aimed at giving four million immigrants to Cote d'Ivoire from other West African countries and their descendents greater rights to own land, take Ivorian nationality and run for the presidency. They are also seen as a precursor to securing free and fair elections, scheduled for a year's time. But a special session of parliament closed without passing any of them last week. Parliament reopens on Wednesday, but there are no expectations that it will pass the legal reform package in time for disarmament to kick off on 15 October. Nobody appears to have any clear idea of what will happen next, but the demonstrations of the last three days are further evidence that political tempers are rising. Several diplomats and political commentators described this week's demonstrations as a show of force by Gbagbo and his supporters. "All this muscle flexing is just to test the waters. The real troubles are ahead," said one analyst who used to work as an advisor to Gbagbo. One West African diplomat working for the United Nations in Dakar agreed. "We all know where it is coming from," he said. But the diplomat added that what was more worrying than the recent violence was the fact that Cote d'Ivoire appeared to be "on a one-way street to nowhere."

DR Congo

IRIN 8 Oct 2004 ICC signs cooperation accord with Kinshasa [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] © ICC KINSHASA, 8 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed an accord on Wednesday allowing the court to begin investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed within the country. "We have finalised and signed an accord with the government to permit the investigation," Yves Sorokobi, the spokesperson for the court's prosecutor, told IRIN. The court's assistant prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, and the minister for justice, Kisimba Ngoy, signed the accord in the capital, Kinshasa. Ngoy said the court now had "jurisdiction" to operate in the country. A 12-member delegation from the two-year-old court, headed by Brammertz, arrived in Kinshasa on Monday to finalise the accord. The court is due to be properly established in the country by the beginning of 2005. The court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, first formally considered investigating crimes in the DRC earlier this year, following a request by President Joseph Kabila for him to do so. In June, Moreno-Ocampo agreed to start investigations, particularly into crimes perpetrated in the troubled district of Ituri, in northeastern DRC. He is investigating crimes committed in the north of Uganda, following a request by the president of that country. "The court can only investigate serious crimes committed since July 2002," Ngoy said. He was referring to the date the ICC was created, which is also the date from which crimes must have been committed in order for the court to have the mandate to investigate and prosecute them. "The Congolese judiciary will deal with a number of crimes committed before that date," he said. Numerous human rights violations and other serious crimes were reportedly perpetrated in the DRC during five years of war. And crimes are reportedly still being committed, particularly in the east of the country, despite a global peace agreement signed in December 2002. According to NGOs, on-going fighting between armed groups in Ituri has left tens of thousands dead and at least 500,000 people displaced. The serious crimes committed there include allegations of cannibalism against the Batwa people, also known as Pygmies. Sorokobi said the office of the prosecutor "has received relevant information from President Joseph Kabila as well as other recent information, but we are not able to make a comment on it".

Xinhuanet 20 Oct 2004 Over 8,500 genocide participants still in Congo: UN www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-20 21:45:38 KIGALI, Oct. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo (MONUC) has said that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) still gives sanctuary to over 8,500 extremist Hutu militias involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday. The report said that the number of the militias, known as the Interahamwe, had increased after they recruited young men who crossed to the DRC in 1994 aged between 8-10 years. The Interahamwe mostly around south Kivu region bordering Rwanda also recruited into their ranks the genocide suspects who escaped and crossed to the DRC after being released from prison onpresidential pardon. Asked for a comment, Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Muligandesaid the report concerning the big number of the militias is "not a surprise." He however warned that although they had not received the report, the government would still "not tolerate their hostile plans." The Interahamwe has been reportedly involved in a recent massacre of over 150 people in a Burundi refugee camp. An estimated 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, were killed in the genocide in 1994, which was organized by extremist Hutus in Rwanda in the space of just 100 days.

Ethiopia

AFP 21 Oct 2004 Ethiopian court sentences three genocide suspects to death ADDIS ABABA, Oct 20 (AFP) -- An Ethiopian high court on Wednesday sentenced three genocide suspects to death and a fourth to 20 years in prison for murders carried out during the reign of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. The court sentenced Iman Kelil Oumar, Beyan Ahmed Ousman and Asli Ahmed to death and Biftu Roba to 20 years behind bars for their role in the death of 207 people in Ethiopia's east and west Hararge Zones in 1991, the ruling stated. The court found Iman was found guilty of involvement in the killing of 207 people, Beyan for participating in the killing of 205 people and Asli for his involving in the killing of 89 people. It also found Biftu guilty of killing a woman and harrasing civilians while armed. The four members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) carried out the murders on the basis that their victims were from the Amhara ethnic group and spies of the ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. Since 1994, Ethiopia has conducted trials of people accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, particularly during the so-called Red Terror period, when tens of thousands of Ethiopians were killed or simply disappeared. Nearly 5,200 former soldiers and communist activists are due to be tried by the courts. Around 2,200 are currently in prison in Ethiopia. Mengistu, who has lived in Zimbabwe since fleeing in 1991, was convicted in absentia. The OLF was part of Ethiopia's transition government from 1991-95, after the fall of the Marxist regime of Mengistu. After numerous disputes, the OLF quit the coalition and demanded the creation of an independent state to be called Oromia.

Liberia

BBC 20 Oct 2004, Liberia moves against Taylor aides The UN froze Mr Taylor's assets in March this year Liberia has imposed economic sanctions on two people with connections to exiled president, Charles Taylor. They appear on a list of 22 names compiled by the United Nations, which passed a resolution in March ordering the freezing of their assets. Justice Minister Kabineh Janneh said the government now has enough evidence to proceed with the resolution. Mr Taylor resigned and fled to Nigeria last year and is wanted on war crimes charges in Sierra Leone. Fuel conflicts Mr Janneh said the assets of Emmanuel Shaw, a former finance minister in the 1980s and the former commissioner of Liberia's maritime affairs bureau, Benoni Urey, would remain frozen until further instructions from the UN Security Council. The two men are both top officials at a mobile phone company, Lone Star Communication. "This is not limited to the two individuals," Mr Janneh told the BBC, warning that further investigations were being made. The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in the capital Monrovia, said the Security Council recently sent a team to Liberia to see who on their list of Mr Taylor's aides was still operating businesses there. The justice minister told the BBC that he hoped the action would help prevent the destabilisation of the region. The UN alleges that some of the assets of those on its list were used to fuel past conflicts in West Africa. Mr Taylor is alleged to have backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone who killed and mutilated many thousands during that country's brutal 10-year conflict. The UN resolution, passed in March, said that the former president and his associates are undermining "Liberia's transition to democracy". After 14 years of civil war, Liberia is expected to hold elections in October next year.

IRIN 27 Oct 2004 Ethiopia: 'Face of famine' has evolved to hope 20 years on [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] MEKELE, 27 October (IRIN) - She became the face of famine, yet no one knew her name. Barely alive Birhan Weldu's emaciated face became the despairing image of Ethiopia in 1984 and was beamed to TV screens all over the world. Now Birhan, who miraculously survived the 1984 disaster that claimed the lives of one million Ethiopians, has become a symbol of hope for her country. "Sometimes I can't believe I survived because hundreds of thousands of children like me lost their lives," Birhan, who lost her mother and elder sister to the famine, said. "I was lucky," added the 23 year-old, whose country, one of the world's poorest, is still gripped by food shortages, with millions dependent on foreign food aid. It is 20 years this month since the first TV bulletins galvanised Bob Geldof to form Band Aid, bringing together pop stars to release the song, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' That year Birhan's father, Weldu Menameno, joined thousands of others to trek to Mekele through the Ethiopian highlands, some 800 km north of the capital, Addis Ababa. He went seeking food after his crops failed from successive droughts. His oldest daughter, Azmara, died on the journey and Birhan was terribly ill. "The nuns who were helping feed people said she would die within 15 minutes," recalls 57-year-old Weldu. "She was dying in my hands." The terrible scene was captured by renowned Canadian TV reporter Brian Stewart and relayed around the world. The footage became the backdrop to the 1985 Live Aid concerts broadcast simultaneously in the US and in Britain. "I wrapped her in a shroud and prepared to bury her, but I didn't have a shovel to dig a grave," added the farmer. "A lot of people were dead - laying on the ground like leaves and I didn't want that for my daughter. Eventually some people helped dig a grave." As Weldu prepared to lay his daughter in the grave he noticed a slight pulse. After intensive care by nurses his daughter survived. Earlier this month, Birhan, who is in her first year of agricultural college, finally met Geldof, who raised US $14 million from Band Aid. She was also introduced to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The pair arrived in Addis Ababa for the second meeting of the Commission for Africa to help try and bring an end to the poverty, conflict and disease that ravage the continent. Blair said afterwards that Birhan had become a symbol of hope amid the suffering. "Despite all the problems Ethiopia has, they have still made progress," Blair said. However, 20 years after the famine, Ethiopia still remains on the edge. In December the government is expected to appeal for food aid for as many as 12 million people. Last year, 14 million faced starvation without foreign handouts. The population has almost doubled from 40 million to 70 million. Per-capita income has dropped from $190 to under $100 now. The government says the blame lies with unfair western trade and debt policies. Aid levels at $1.9 billion a year are still one of the lowest in Africa. Ethiopia is strapped by massive debt whose interest alone is more than the entire health budget of the country, costing $149 million in 2003. A slump in global coffee prices has also cost the country $167 million in the last three years. Aid organisations and western governments complain about the lack of land ownership, government red tape and restrictions on private businesses and foreign investment. A recent report conducted by the Ethiopian government, the UN and non-governmental organisations found that if changes are not made in areas like population growth, environmental degradation could significantly impact existing land policies, thus creating the potential for future crises to spiral out of control. "A failure to address these issues will only guarantee the continued need to respond to future droughts and crises in an emergency mode with ever increasing resource requirement," it said. "There is no guarantee that the high level of donor assistance will be repeated in future crises." Fortunately, the awful scenes of 1984 have not been repeated thanks to the country's highly sophisticated relief network, set up after the famine. Key institutions now play an integral role in aid effectiveness, which was lacking 20 years ago. One of the best organisations set up during that time period, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), keeps track of crucial food reserves and serves as the government's emergency and relief arm. The government also has crucial food reserves in place, which now can hold up to 400,000 mt. Early warning systems at the local level feed into a national database that means officials maintain an accurate picture of the food status in the country. The government has already launched the much-heralded $3.2 billion, five-year New Coalition for Food Security strategy that aims to end hunger for up to 15 million people. Within the coalition is a new approach to using food aid to boost development by encouraging people to work rather than just rely on handouts. Called productive safety nets, the government plans to launch the scheme for five million people in January. Tigray, the northern province of Ethiopia that was the epicentre of the 1984 famine and was, at that time, ravaged by a civil war, is home to Birhan. A quarter of its 4 million people still need food aid to survive. Birhan fears that without real help the dependency and quick fix solutions will continue. "I pray this never happens again and I am thankful for all the help we have received," Birhan said from the stone house she shares with her father, stepmother, and six brothers and sisters. "But what we need is schools to educate ourselves, dams for farmers so they are not dependent on the rains. "We need health centres and industries for people to have jobs. We need to be able to stand on our own and not always be reliant on aid."

Libya

Reuters 5 Oct 2004 Libya to host a mini-summit on Darfur this month By Salah Sarrar TRIPOLI, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will host a summit on the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur with the presidents of Chad, Egypt and Nigeria, a Libyan government source said on Tuesday. "A summit of the leaders of three countries neighbouring Sudan - Chad, Egypt and Libya - and the Nigerian president, who is the current chairman of the African Union, will take place in Libya this month," the source told Reuters. The summit was scheduled for Oct. 15 or 17, the source said. Libya had also invited the Sudanese government and the two rebel movements from Darfur, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement. "The summit will focus on ensuring food supply for the refugees and displaced people in Darfur, security and protection for the regional population and forging a global and lasting solution to the crisis in Darfur," the source said. Darfur rebels took up arms against Khartoum in February 2003, saying the government neglected and marginalised the impverished region. They accuse the government of arming mounted Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn out non-Arab villages in a a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Arab nomads and mostly non-Arab farmers have fought over resources for years in arid Darfur. The Libyan government source said Tripoli was optimistic about the summit outcome because the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League back the planned summit.

AFP 5 Oct 2004 Sudan's Beshir invited to Darfur mini-summit in Libya KHARTOUM, Oct 5 (AFP) - Libya and the African Union Tuesday invited Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to a mini-summit in Libya on the Darfur crisis, due to be attended by Sudan's neighbors Chad and Egypt. This came during a meeting between Beshir and Libyan leader Moamer Khadafi's special envoy, Said Arabi Hefiana, and Nigeria's junior foreign minister, Aboubakar Tanko, who is also assistant secretary general of the AU. Hefiana and Tanko delivered the invitation in letters from Khadafi and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current chairman of the AU, which is sponsoring peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels. The official Al-Anbaa daily on Tuesday quoted Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail as saying the letters also dealt with the situation in Darfur and efforts by the AU to resolve the 20-month conflict there. Hefiana and Tanko flew to Khartoum from Egypt where they delivered a message to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, also inviting him to the summit. Following the meeting, Egyptian presidential spokesman Maged Abdel Fattah told reporters consultations were underway to determine the exact date of the summit, which was to take place "before October 21". The summit was part of ongoing AU efforts to "contain the situation in Darfur", where conflict has left some 50,000 people dead, displaced an estimated 1.4 million and forced nearly 200,000 to flee into neighboring Chad. It also aimed to "fend off the consequences of United Nations Security Council resolutions and consolidate the role of the AU in dealing with the conflict," Abdel Fattah said. The UN Security Council passed a resolution in September threatening sanctions against Sudan's vital oil industry for the government's failure to rein in pro-government Arab militias accused of atrocities in Darfur. The visits of the Libyan and AU envoys coincided with a meeting in Ndjamena, Chad, of the AU's ceasefire committee and representatives from the Sudanese government and the two main rebel groups in Darfur. Ismail told A-Anbaa participants would also discuss the situation in Darfur and ceasefire violations by Sudan and the Darfur rebels. He reiterated his government's acceptance of the Security Council resolution on Darfur calling for an increased number of AU troops in Darfur and broadening their mandate, saying this would help in the process of confidence-building, particularly between the police and displaced persons. Sudan recently agreed that the AU could deploy its troops in camps for displaced persons in Darfur to monitor the activities of the police. Ismail said the move would reassure the displaced, many of who accuse the police of complicity in attacks against them by Arab militias and encourage them to move freely in and out of the camps. The news comes as British Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to pay a brief visit to Sudan Wednesday for talks with Sudanese leaders on several issues, including the Darfur crisis. mas/sap/al .

Nigeria

IRIN 4 Oct 2004 Obasanjo kicks off Africa's polio vaccination drive in hotspot state [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] KANO, 4 October (IRIN) - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo kicked off a massive, synchronised polio campaign at the weekend, by immunising the baby daughter of the state governor whose vaccination ban helped the crippling disease spread across West Africa. As current president of the African Union, Obasanjo on Saturday launched the new drive to immunise 80 million children in 23 countries from the disease, which can cause paralysis and leaves them consigned to wheelchairs or crutches. His first patient was one-year-old Zaina, daughter of Kano state governor, Ibrahim Shekaru, "It is our resolve that all children aged between 1 and 59 months are immunized against this disease," Obasanjo said. "Let us receive our vaccination teams in our homes, at school and in public places." Figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show Nigeria currently accounts for more than 80 percent of all cases of polio worldwide. Shekaru, leader of the mainly Muslim state of Kano, last year outlawed the polio vaccines for 10 months after radical Islamic preachers branded them part of a Western, Christian plot to reduce Nigeria's Muslim population by making them infertile and infecting them with cancer. The ban helped polio spread around Nigeria and ripple across the wider region, derailing international health experts' plans to eradicate the viral disease by the end of 2004. Five times as many children in the region were struck with polio in the first half of 2004 compared with the same period last year. Strains of the virus traced to Nigeria infected children in 12 west and central African countries previously declared polio-free and experts warned the region was on the brink of the largest epidemic in recent years. The latest push to simultaneously vaccinate children around the continent aims to reach 80 million children between 8 and 12 October in 23 countries from Benin to Togo. "(This is) the largest-ever, cross-border polio campaign in history," the Global Polio Eradication Initiative said in a statement. The World Health Organisation said volunteer health workers would comb the countries, going door-to-door, house-to-house, village-to-village, on foot, by car, and by boat to reach every single child under the age of five. Further immunisation rounds will follow in November and throughout 2005.

Rwanda

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) 7 Oct 2004 EU Warns Rwanda on Controversial Genocide Report Kigali The European Union (EU) on Thursday expressed concern about the Rwandan government's response to a controversial parliamentary report on genocide. The report had called for the banning of civil society organizations and prosecution of individuals for harbouring and spreading 'genocide ideology'. "The EU regrets that the Government of Rwanda has not unequivocally stated that those mentioned in the parliamentary report are presumed innocent until the contrary is proven. Individuals have been publicly accused on the basis of information that is insufficiently substantiated. The report therefore has an intimidating impact.", reads a statement by the EU presidency. The parliamentary report recommends the dissolution of five Rwandan Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) including a prominent human rights organization; Rwandese League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (LIPRODHOR). It also suggests government warnings against the other NGO's, including three international NGOs, schools and church institutions. Furthermore, the report asks for the prosecution of members of these organisations involved in the "dissemination of the genocide ideology". The Rwandan government last month commended the parliament on the "initiative" and called for "judicial authorities to examine the contents of the report and prosecute where necessary". The EU welcomed the announcement of further investigation but said these should be completed "as expeditiously as possible". The EU also expressed concern at "the liberal use of the terms 'ideology of genocide' and 'divisionism'" and called on the Rwandan government "to clarify the definition of these terms and how they relate to the laws on discrimination and sectarianism and to the freedom of speech in general." Observers in Kigali say that although there are a few Rwandans who still support the genocide, the government is perceived as using labels of 'genocide ideology' and 'divisionism' to silence political opposition.

Xinhua 21 Oct 2004 UN tribunal witness murdered in Rwanda A witness who was expected to appear at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)in Arusha, Tanzania, has been murdered in cold blood, the state-run Radio Rwanda reported Thursday. Reports said that the victim Bosco Nyemanzi, resident of Kaduhadistrict in Gikongoro province south of Rwanda, was a former genocide convict. He was murdered Tuesday when unknown men broke into his house late at night and hit him several times with metallic bars. It is said he was targeted since he was due to testify against a suspect at the ICTR. Police has arrested Ana Marie Mukashema, wife to the deceased, who is suspected to have connived with others still at large in the murder plot. The murder has attracted attention of several government officials, including Internal Affairs Minister Christophe Bazivamoand Justice Minister Edda Mukabagwiza, who made an immediate fact-finding visit to the area together with Commissioner General of Police Frank Mugambage and Prosecutor General Jean du-Dieu Mucyo. They addressed residents at Kaduha district headquarters, whom they assured of security, and said further investigation will be continued. Bazivamo advised Kaduha residents to cooperate with police and local authorities and report anyone suspected of engaging in divisive tendencies, reported the radio. "Those people who choose to murder others in order to hide their roles in the 1994 genocide, are just adding more offenses totheir crimes and government will not hesitated to arrest and charge them," the radio quoted Bazivamo, but said the task requires joint efforts with the general public. Several cases of killings have been registered in the past fewmonth mainly targeting the 1994 survivors who currently give testimonies of what happened in genocide.

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne) 20 Oct 2004 Prosecution Witness Assassinated in Rwanda Arusha A man was last week assassinated in Rwanda one month after returning from Arusha, Tanzania, where he had testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Bosco Nyemanzi, a confessed genocide criminal, was killed last Thursday at his home in Kaduha, Gikongoro (southern Rwanda) after he returned from giving evidence against Colonel Aloys Simba, a genocide suspect whose trial was adjourned last month. According to the Rwandan Senior attorney Emmanuel Rukangira, eight suspects, including the victim's wife, Anne-Marie Mukashema, have been arrested in connection with the death. Rukangira said that Mukashema "was cooperating with the investigations". But he revealed that one of the suspects had escaped from custody. On Wednesday morning by the spokesperson of the ICTR, Roland Amoussouga confirmed that the victim had testified against Simba in September under the pseudonym "YH" to protect his identity. He said the motive behind the murder was not yet known. A senior member of the witness protection section of the ICTR went to Kigali on Saturday to investigate the matter and is due to return to Arusha Wednesday evening. Amoussouga however pointed out that there was no evidence yet to link the assassination of Nyemanzi to his testifying at the ICTR. Aloys Simba is a retired Colonel who was close to former President Juvenal Habyarimana and is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. His trial opened August 30 and was adjourned September 27 after hearing 11 witnesses, including Nyemanzi. The murder took place in Kaduha, a small village close to Gikongoro (south), where two other people who were preparing to testify in the local courts were also murdered last year. According to Rukangira, the victim's wife had told investigators she believed that the motive for the murder "was related to the victim's intended testimony in the Simba trial". "We have also come to learn that the victim intended to testify against many other suspects detained in Rwanda", he added. All the suspects in Bosco Nyemanzi's murder appeared on Tuesday before the High Court of Nyanza in Butare province (southern Rwanda).

Somalia

AFP 29 Oct 2004 Fifteen dead as Somali regions clash over border dispute MOGADISHU, Oct 29 (AFP) - At least 15 people were killed and scores wounded Friday after fighting erupted over a border dispute between Somaliland and Puntland, two regions in northern Somalia, officials and residents said. It was the first time that the dispute over the territory of Sool denegerated into major hostilities. The fighting pitted government troops from Somaliland, which considers itself an independent state, against fighters loyal to the regional government in neighbouring Puntland. "Some 15 people were killed and scores more wounded by the fighting which is continuing," said Mohamed Said, a resident of Lasanod, the main town in the disputed region. He said the fighting was taking place in the nearby village of Adhi-adeeye. "I can confirm the battle but am unable to give any further details," Ismail Omar Aden, defense minister of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, in northwest Somalia, told journalists in Somaliland's capital, Hargeisa. There were unconfirmed reports that up to 35 people were killed in the fighting. Somaliland, which unilaterally seceded from the rest of Somalia in May 1991, claims Sool as part of its territory, while semi-autonomous Puntland to the east insists the area's residents are Harti, the dominant clan in Puntland. Somaliland has refused to have anything to do with the rest of Somalia, or to recognise the country's newly elected president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who used to be the president of Puntland.

washingtonpost.com 31 Oct 2004 100 Are Reported Killed In Violence in Somalia Breakaway Region Rejects New Leader By Hussein Ali Nur Reuters Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page A24 HARGEYSA, Somalia, Oct. 30 -- About 100 people were reported killed on Saturday in fighting between Puntland and the rival Somali territory of Somaliland. The hostilities erupted after Puntland's leader was elected president in a new effort to reunite Somalia under a national government. Abdullahi Yusuf has pledged to work peacefully with breakaway Somaliland as he tries to restore order to Somalia, which descended into anarchy in 1991 following the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. But his election on Oct. 10 alarmed Somaliland, which declared full independence from Somalia in 1991. Many people in Somaliland view Yusuf as a serious foe because he was the leader of Puntland, a neighboring autonomous territory that has land disputes with Somaliland. Somaliland authorities warned Yusuf on Oct. 12 against any attempted aggression and said they were on alert against any move to bring Somaliland back into Somalia. "Full mobilization of our soldiers is going on and will continue until Abdullahi Yusuf's forces leave our territory," a spokesman for the Somaliland president said on Saturday, adding that fighting had stopped because of heavy rains. A spokesman for Somaliland's Defense Office said the death toll from the fighting, which erupted on Friday at the village of Adi-Addeye, about 20 miles north of Las Anod, had risen to 109. It was not immediately clear whether that figure referred to combat casualties or civilians or both. The spokesman said nine Somaliland soldiers were killed in the fighting. Puntland and Somaliland have fought sporadic clashes for years over the ownership of several eastern areas of Somaliland claimed by Puntland's leaders on the basis of ethnicity. Las Anod has been a flash point during previous fighting. Matt Bryden, a senior analyst with the policy research organization International Crisis Group, said Yusuf's elevation to the presidency had heightened tensions between the two territories. "It is probably going to get worse unless dialogue is started," he said. Yusuf was elected head of state by Somali lawmakers after two years of intermittent peace talks, held in Kenya because of insecurity at home. He has not yet been able to return to Somalia because of the continued chaos there, and has asked the African Union to send 20,000 peacekeepers to disarm the militias that control much of the failed state. "The president is very much concerned about the unfortunate clashes that happened yesterday which caused heavy losses of life and property," the head of Somalia's presidential press service, Yusuf Mohamed Ismail, told reporters in Nairobi. Ismail said Yusuf wanted an international fact-finding mission to establish the cause of the fighting and facilitate a cease-fire. Yusuf said in a letter sent to neighboring states and the United Nations on Friday that Puntland had told him Somaliland was waging "an all-out war."

South Africa

News24 SA 11 Oct 2004 SA judge to lead Sudan probe 11/10/2004 11:19 - (SA) Related Articles Ex-SA judge to lead apartheid law suit Cape Town - Former TRC commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza has been appointed head of a technical team that will advise the United Nation's International Commission of Inquiry on the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, SABC reported on Monday. Ntsebeza was one of five judicial officials selected from five countries, which include besides South Africa, also Italy, Egypt, Peru, and Pakistan. Ntsebeza said he would use the knowledge he gained from the TRC experience to assist the commission, SABC said. The former judge was the chief investigator in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which probed apartheid's history and recorded hundreds of human rights violations, mainly against blacks. He retired as a judge of the South African Labour Court in August 2002, and left for the United States to lead a team suing foreign corporations for allegedly helping finance the apartheid regime.

Sudan See Libya, United Kingdom

washingtonpost.com 30 Sept 2004 Weary Darfur Villagers Tell of Attack Men in Government Uniforms, Backed by Aircraft, Force Hundreds From Homes By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, September 30, 2004; Page A21 HAY DRIG, Sudan, Sept. 29 -- Haggard survivors of fighting in southern Darfur, thorns stuck to their bloody feet, straggled into this refugee community before dawn Wednesday and told harrowing tales of attacks by men in government uniforms who marauded through their villages. "The war is not over," cried out Mohamed Abdullah Ibrahim, 45, his donkey stacked with grain, cooking pots and water jugs. He arrived in Hay Drig along with 245 other refugees who were forced to flee Fashe, 30 miles to the east, seeking shelter under the branches of a wide tree at an encampment here five miles outside Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. Ibrahim walked among scores of refugees who described attacks that forced them from their homes. Their stories echoed reports by refugees over the past 19 months throughout Darfur. All blamed attacks on the Janjaweed Arab militia, whose fighters are loyal to the Sudanese government in Khartoum, the capital. The accounts of the latest refugees illustrated the difficulty of stopping the guerrilla war in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, despite intense international attention. Nearly 1.5 million people are estimated to have been displaced and another 200,000 are living across the border in refugee camps in Chad. The U.N. Security Council will soon consider sanctions against Sudan and an increase in African Union troops here if the government does not end what has been called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The U.S. government has said the atrocities in Sudan amount to genocide. One refugee, Ahmed Ibrahim, 53, described an attack by men on foot and others riding camels. "They were Janjaweed in government uniforms," said Ibrahim, who arrived at Hay Drig at 5 a.m. "Then we saw land cruisers following. Then the bombers and helicopter gunships came overhead." "It was nearing harvest time. I had a thousand head of camels, cows and goats," Ibrahim recounted as a crowd of refugees gathered. "We knew this was happening around Darfur. But it had not reached us yet. This is a calamity." The claims of attacks by government-backed militia forces were not possible to verify independently, although Sudanese police stopped a reporter and aid workers 15 miles down the road toward Fashe as the sounds of gunfire rang out. As a helicopter gunship flew by, police ordered the group to turn its cars around quickly and leave the area. Nearby, five women accompanying a gaggle of children said their truck had been attacked on the way from Fashe to the Hay Drig refugee camp. Aisha Mohamed, 45, collapsed, weeping, and said her mother was shot in the face by a man wearing a government uniform. In the rush to leave, her mother was left behind, and Mohamed didn't know whether she had survived. "They ambushed us," she said. "We couldn't even escape. We were walking all night, I couldn't find my mother. I was feeling sick." Mohamed told friends who gathered around her that she wanted to go back to find her mother. But they wouldn't let her, restraining her as she cried. The fighting in Darfur broke out last year when two African rebel groups, charging that their tribes faced political and economic discrimination, attacked police stations and military outposts. The government is accused of backing the Janjaweed, an Arabic term for "devils on horseback," to crush the rebellion. The government contends that the Janjaweed are criminals beyond their control. The fighting has left parts of Darfur in tatters. Thousands of women have told aid workers they were raped by Arab militiamen, and African and Arab neighbors say it will take a generation to mend relations. A government official told the official Sudan News Agency that the recent violence was caused by African rebel groups fighting government forces in Darfur. The official, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, minister of humanitarian affairs, accused the rebels of launching attacks on the Damba region, 100 miles south of Nyala, wounding an unknown number of people. The government maintains that reports of human suffering are exaggerated in Darfur and that characterizations of genocide are bogus. Sudanese officials accuse U.S. politicians of overstating the situation in Darfur during the election campaign in an effort to portray concern for the plight of Africans. In addition, they say that African rebel groups are trying to overthrow the Sudanese government. Government officials cite reports of a failed coup last weekend as proof that the situation in Darfur was exaggerated by anti-government rebel groups who want to take power. A foreign diplomat in Khartoum suggested that reports of the coup attempt could actually be "Sudanese theater and an attempt by the government to distract attention away from human suffering in Darfur." The refugees who arrived at this squalid camp on Wednesday said countries around the world needed to do more. Hay Drig, a poor community even before it became a magnet for refugees four months ago, has swelled into a maze of tightly built huts resembling fragile bird nests, with a population that has grown to 11,000. There are few services, with international medical workers visiting only once a week. The situation is similar in other areas, according to relief workers, who said that 5,000 people forced to flee their homes had arrived at camps throughout Darfur in the last week. On Wednesday, the shocked village elders of Fashe held long meetings at Hay Drig, coming to terms with the fact that they, too, had now joined the ranks of Darfur's desperate refugees. They made lists of stolen animals and wondered what to do. Teenage girls unloaded their donkeys, searching for tin drinking cups and jerry cans to collect water. Pregnant women sat perspiring in the sun, and children built makeshift shelters from mats, twigs and shreds of clothing.

washingtonpost.com 1 Oct 2004 A Call to End Unrest in Sudan Report to U.N. Urges Deployment of Foreign Peacekeepers By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A23 UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 30 -- Sudanese-backed Arab militias continue to terrorize hundreds of thousands of black African civilians with impunity in the Darfur region of Sudan, lending greater urgency to international calls for the deployment of thousands of foreign peacekeepers there, the United Nations' top human rights official said Thursday. Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, told the U.N. Security Council that displaced civilians are routinely harassed and intimidated by government security forces that have been sent to Darfur to protect them. Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice who just returned from a visit to Darfur, said that local police and courts have failed to respond to reports of violence and rape near camps housing displaced people. "The government continues to convey neither a sense of urgency nor an acknowledgment of the magnitude of the human rights crisis in Darfur," Arbour told the council in a closed-door session. "In short, my mission came away from Sudan gravely concerned that the government, its security forces -- particularly the police and the judicial system -- are failing the people of Darfur." Arbour, who was accompanied on her visit by the U.N. special adviser for the prevention of genocide, Juan Mendez, stopped short of declaring the violence genocide, noting that a new commission of inquiry being established by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will make that formal determination. The Bush administration has accused the Sudanese government and the militia of perpetrating genocide in Darfur. But Mendez told the 15-nation council: "Crimes against humanity, war crimes and breaches of the laws of war have probably occurred on a large and systematic scale. We do not believe that we have turned a corner on preventing further violations, and we must remain vigilant to this end." The crisis in Darfur began in February 2003, when two rebel groups, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, launched a series of attacks against government outposts, citing discrimination against the region's black civilians. The Sudanese authorities organized and supported Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, as they swept through the region, killing tens of thousands of civilians and driving more than 1 million from their homes. The World Health Organization estimates that 6,000 to 10,000 civilians are dying each month from violence and disease. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said last weekend that the African Union, which has 380 troops monitoring a shaky cease-fire in Darfur, is prepared to send as many as 5,000 more to help defuse the crisis. But he said that Western governments would have to come up with hundred of millions of dollars to support the mission. Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, denied that his country's armed forces are involved in the violence in a lengthy closed-door speech to the 15-nation council Thursday afternoon. He said Sudan is struggling to stop the militia. Ismail told reporters after the meeting that Khartoum has agreed to an African Union request to allow more than 3,500 troops, including 1,000 police, into Darfur. Ismail said that they would be given a stronger mandate that would allow them to monitor police activities and to help them ensure the protection of civilians. John C. Danforth, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that Sudan would have to do a better job of proving its commitment to stop the violence. "This is a show-me situation," he said. Danforth also challenged assertions by Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Bashir, which were published Thursday in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, that the United States helped arm and train Darfur rebels. It is "baloney," Danforth said. But Arbour's report did little to increase support for tougher action by the council, which has twice threatened to consider imposing sanctions on the government if it failed to rein in the militia. China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria continue to oppose U.S. efforts to threaten sanctions on Sudan. "I don't know why we keep speaking about sanctions," said Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram. "We think it's the wrong direction. We have to evoke more cooperation, and it has to be done in a measured way. We shouldn't go overboard."

WP 1 Oct 2004; Page A26 Sudan President Says U.S. Trained Rebels KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The United States helped train and arm rebels from western Sudan who rose up against the Sudanese government last year, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, the Sudanese president, said in remarks published in an Egyptian newspaper Thursday. "Who else than the United States is behind this? . . . They took rebels to Eritrea and set up training camps for them, spent money on them, armed them," Bashir told the Al-Ahram weekly when asked about foreign involvement in the Darfur region. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane was returned to Denmark. _A State Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed the charge. "The whole purpose of the U.S. policy is to end the violence in Sudan," the official said. "We are not funding, training, providing armaments to, supporting in any way, shape or form the rebels." The United States has labeled the violence in Darfur genocide, blaming the Sudanese government and the Arab Janjaweed militia, which Khartoum has been accused of arming.

NYT 2 Oct 2004 Sudan Agrees to Allow 3,500 African Union Troops Into Darfur By SOMINI SENGUPTA KHARTOUM, Sudan, Oct. 1 - Sudan has agreed to allow 3,500 African Union troops into war-ravaged western Darfur as a means of building confidence among civilians who, United Nations officials have repeatedly said, no longer trust their own government. Among other things, the African Union monitors will be allowed to police the Sudanese police. The agreement represents the largest step taken by this government to comply with the demands of the United Nations Security Council. It is already under biting international pressure, most notably the threat of sanctions, should it fail to act to restore security in Darfur. The war in the west has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 1.5 million, mostly black Africans, from their homes. It began in early 2003 with a rebel uprising that demanded greater political and economic rights for the long-marginalized west. The Arab-led government cracked down, using its own military and arming private Arab militias. The United States has called the government's actions genocide. The United Nations Security Council, in a resolution passed in September, ordered an inquiry commission to determine whether the violence in Darfur met the criteria for genocide. The government's decision comes as the Security Council prepares to review a report next week on Sudan's progress made by the secretary general's special representative on Sudan, Jan Pronk. The swift expansion of African Union troops and the broadening of their mandate has been among his crucial demands. "We need many thousands of African Union troops with a broad mandate, quick deployment, big numbers," Mr. Pronk said in an interview last week. Until now, Sudan has resolutely opposed any foreign intervention in security matters and allowed only a handful of African Union soldiers to monitor a cease-fire agreement; in the western region roughly the size of France, there are 68 unarmed monitors and 308 armed troops to protect them. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday, the Sudanese foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said his government had asked the African Union to work with its security forces in Darfur "so that we will make sure that there is no violation of human rights, there is no killing, there is building of confidence." "We need to expand their mandate and to give them more mandates, for protection, mandate for checking, mandate for investigating, and yes, they need such mandates," he added. Adam Thiam, the spokesman for the chairman of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said in a telephone interview on Friday evening that deployment would begin as soon as possible. Both Nigeria and Rwanda have committed the necessary number of troops, but logistical support like trucks and helicopters remain an obstacle. Mr. Pronk's spokeswoman, Radhia Achour, welcomed the government's move as a "major step forward." "We do believe it will help a great deal in restoring the confidence between the population of Darfur and the government of Sudan and between Sudan and the international community," she said in an interview here. "We would call on the government of Sudan to maintain this spirit of cooperation and to sustain this level of cooperation once this mission is deployed." The broadened mandate of the African Union would include monitoring the Sudanese police, but would fall significantly short of authorization to protect civilians. That kind of mandate, under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, has not been discussed and is unlikely to be accepted by Sudan, United Nations officials have said.

NYT 3 Oct 2004 In Sudan, No Clear Difference Between Arab and African By SOMINI SENGUPTA KHARTOUM, Sudan — ABDALLA ADAM KHATIR, 50, is from Darfur, in western Sudan. His grandmother was an Arab, her grandfather was a member of an African tribe. He calls himself an African. As a boy in Kabkabiya, deep in the heart of Darfur, he traveled three days by camel caravan to reach the nearest town with an intermediate school. The caravan was led by an Arab, but at no point did he or his family feel unsafe. As a student here in the capital in the 1960's, he took up the banner of Arab-African unity, led by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. But today, Mr. Khatir finds himself wrestling with the gut-wrenching fact that, in the past two years, 102 of his relatives have been killed in Darfur by those he calls Arabs. Yet in the end, Mr. Khatir, a writer and a member of the Darfur Writers and Journalists Association, does not view this as a war between Arabs and Africans. He blames it squarely on the government in Khartoum. Its leaders, he says, have deliberately inflamed nascent ethnic divisions in a bid to stay in power. War broke out in western Sudan in early 2003, when a rebel insurrection, frustrated by what it called the Sudan government's marginalization of Darfur, demanded economic and political reforms. The government swiftly struck back, deploying Arab militias across the region. The violence has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced around 1.5 million. Across Darfur, it was largely the villages of Africans that were torched, and with some exceptions, it was largely tribes that call themselves African that crowded into refugee camps or fled across the border to Chad. The United States and others have accused the attackers of committing "genocide," the systematic destruction of a national or ethnic group. Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, has said that crimes against humanity and war crimes "probably occurred on a large and systematic scale." The question is how does race or ethnicity fit in. For generations, race itself has not been all that significant in Darfurian society. People regularly referred to themselves by their tribe affiliation, and rarely as just "Arab" or "African." Arabs have been in the region for almost 1,000 years, and the term has been used mostly to describe those who speak Arabic, as opposed to one of the dozens of local languages, or to those who lead nomadic, not agricultural, existences. "The implication that these are two different races, one indigenous and the other not, is dangerous," said Mahmood Mamdani, director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. But the Darfur crisis has laid bare an unspoken Arab-African fault line that runs across this arid belt of Africa - from Mauritania in the west, to Sudan in the east. Racial consciousness is, in fact, embedded in the history of central Africa. Sudan, for example, was once a center of the Arab slave trade. In Mauritania, in West Africa, blackness, which was associated with slavery, is today associated with servitude. Referring to underlying racial division, Breyten Breytenbach, the South African writer, said, "It is one of the most ambiguous problems and greatest taboos on the continent." What may have surprised everyone in Sudan was that as soon as the rebellion in Darfur began, divisions were drawn. By and large it was Arab tribes in Darfur that rallied to the government's side (some say in exchange for promises of land and power), while the government's political opponents raised the African banner and declared allegiance with the rebels. Those lines could harden even more. The racial character given to the fighting in Darfur by the government and the rebels has found many willing listeners - and the appeal to racial solidarity could extend itself to Chad or further afield to Niger or Mali, where the competition between farmers and nomadic herders could turn even uglier. "There's been a long-running effort to suppress recognition of racial tension," argued Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, a Washington-based advocacy group. "It is something the continent has to grapple with." But racial chauvinism, once let loose in a society, can be hard to put back in the bottle. And its effects can be murderous. It is foolish, said Mr. Khatir, for any Sudanese to consider himself an Arab. "We are not Arabs, not Sudanese - not even those who are telling themselves they are Arabs," he said. "I am an African," he added, "who has absorbed Arab and Islamic culture. The way I see it, our people, Arab tribes and African tribes, are victims of the national policies of this government. We are all victims."

washingtonpost.com 3 Oct 2004 Editorial: As Darfur Waits Sunday, October 3, 2004; Page B06 LIKE A RESCUE squad that hears of an accident but then stops by a 7-Eleven for coffee, the world is ambling toward Darfur, the western Sudanese province where genocide is underway. It's been months since the need for an African Union force to protect Darfur's civilians became obvious, and still there are only 300 or so African Union troops there. With each week, more women are raped and more villages attacked. On Thursday relief officials in one camp for displaced people reported 5,000 recent arrivals, the product of attacks on 10 villages by the government-backed Janjaweed militia. And still a robust contingent of foreign troops is awaited. Why the delay? Partly because of views such as those of Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram. "It has to be done in a measured way," the envoy said recently of the world's response to genocide. "We shouldn't go overboard." But the delay is also made possible by the artful blurring of responsibility for bringing it about. Nobody is held accountable. Sudan's government, which has spent weeks excluding humanitarian workers from Darfur and promising to repel foreign peacekeepers with force, now says it is delighted to welcome an African Union force into its territory. In a briefing to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Sudan's foreign minister insisted that his government wanted foreign troops as soon as possible, and that it would be happy to accept more than the 3,500 that the African Union is offering. What Sudan's government does not advertise is the restrictive mandate under which these troops would be deployed. The foreigners should, in Sudan's view, be restricted to monitoring a cease-fire. They should not presume to protect civilians but should report incidents to Sudan's government -- which has proved itself utterly uninterested in protecting its own civilians. Then there is the African Union itself. Its leaders have been offering loudly to send troops to Darfur. But now that they are faced with a government that welcomes them, they say it will take another two or three weeks to win approval from all member governments for the deployment. In another measure of the African Union's urgent commitment to combating genocide, its officials recently delayed a meeting on Darfur on the ground that they had not received the per diem they thought due them. Finally there is the role of the United States and its allies. The Bush administration is comfortable pushing resolutions through the Security Council and then calling upon the African Union to deploy: "My hope is that the African Union moves rapidly to help save lives," Mr. Bush declared in the debate on Thursday. But if he is serious about that hope, he needs to try harder to make the deployment happen. The United States needs to ensure that the mandate under which peacekeepers deploy is not restrictive. It must encourage the African Union to make haste. And it must get ready for the time when the African Union comes up with a firm deployment proposal. The African troops will need vehicles, helicopters and prefabricated housing. All this needs to be prepared now, in concert with other members of NATO. Otherwise the interminable delays in getting help to Darfur will stretch out even longer.

UN News Centre 7 Oct 2004 www.un.org/News/ Annan proposes ways to help African Union expand its mission in Darfur, Sudan 4 October 2004 – Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed four areas where the United Nations can immediately help the African Union (AU) expand its ceasefire-monitoring mission in the strife-torn Darfur region of Sudan, his spokesman said today. In a letter to AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, Mr. Annan offered support in: setting up a UN assistance cell; pre-screening police for participation in the AU mission; opening a Darfur regional office of the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS); and organizing a pledging conference to fund the enlarged AU mission. The first group of the UN assistance cell, which would be based at the AU's headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, is expected to arrive there today, according to spokesman Fred Eckhard. The AU is expanding the size and scope of its mission in Darfur, an impoverished region in western Sudan that has been beset by conflict since early last year, from its current size of just over 350 ceasefire monitors and protection troops. The ceasefire is between the Sudanese Government and two local rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which have been waging conflict against each other since early last year. About 1.45 million Sudanese are internally displaced and another 200,000 are living as refugees in neighbouring Chad because of both the fighting and the brutal attacks against civilians by militias known as the Janjaweed. The militias stand accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers and destroying homes and cropland. At the request of the Security Council, Mr. Annan is setting up a commission of inquiry to investigate whether genocide has taken place in Darfur. Meanwhile, Mr. Annan's Deputy Special Representative for Political Affairs in Sudan, Taye Zerihoun, is travelling to the Chadian capital N'Djamena to attend the latest meeting of the committee monitoring the ceasefire. After the meeting tomorrow Mr. Zerihoun will then head to Nairobi, Kenya, to attend the resumption on Thursday of peace talks designed to resolve the separate long-running civil war in Sudan's south. Those talks are scheduled to resume with a meeting between Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, the chairman of the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

IRIN 4 Oct 2004 NGOs say 122,800 southerners in need of aid [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] NAIROBI, 4 October (IRIN) - Some 122,800 people in southern Sudan desperately need food aid and other basic needs such as health and educational facilities, agricultural tools and clean water, a group of seven NGOs operating in the region said. Launching an appeal for US $434,913 in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Friday, John Kwaje, chairman of the New Sudanese Indigenous NGOs (NESI) group said: "The seven NGOs which have made the joint appeal operate in various fields of service. The appeal is to save the areas worst hit by food shortages resulting from the lack of rains or the influx of returnees." "The specific counties which will be covered by the funding will include, Anyuak Kingdom in Pochala, Lianya, Torit, Mundri, Twic county and the Shilluk region," he added. NESI is a consortium of 47 indigenous NGOs working in south Sudan with international NGOs. Victoria Garile, Director of South Sudan Community Association, one of the member NGOs said: "Children are learning under trees [and the] number is increasing as some are coming back from exile." Officials of another NGO, Mak-Deel for Development and Training Association, said: "Pochala county currently is congested with 20,000 refugees and internally displaced persons." Before the "Preparation for Sudan Reconstruction" conference held in Oslo, Norway, in September, representatives of the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People 's Liberation Movement/Army had urged the international communities to provide $300 million in aid to cover the urgent needs of people in southern Sudan. They said funds were needed to, among other things, assist about one million or more people who were expected to return home once a final peace accord is signed in the south. The Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission had said it had already registered 1.5 million returnees in South Sudan.

ICG 5 Oct 2004 International Crisis Group Sudan's dual crises: Refocusing on IGAD Africa Briefing OVERVIEW As the Darfur crisis understandably preoccupies the international community, inadequate attention is being paid to ending Sudan's 21-year old civil war between the Khartoum government and the mainly southern insurgency led by the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army). The peace process mediated by the regional organisation IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), looked close to finality in June 2004 but is now at risk. The draft agreement negotiated at Naivasha contains provisions that can assist a political solution in Darfur. The two sets of issues are closely related and need to be dealt with equally and urgently. However, unless current dynamics change, and the UN Security Council puts more pressure upon Khartoum to conclude the IGAD agreement, war could soon resume across the country. If the government chooses to delay conclusion of the peace agreement when the IGAD negotiations resume on 7 October, the six protocols already signed but not yet in force may well begin to unravel -- under pressure from regime hardliners and intellectuals in the North who argue that too many concessions were made to the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), and from elements within the SPLA who never trusted the regime to keep its word and believe it has been weakened by Darfur. If this happens, new fronts in a war that has already cost two million lives are likely to emerge in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and the east. If the government chooses cooperation, peace in Sudan could be secured before the end of the year. Wrapping up the IGAD (Naivasha) agreement would lay the groundwork for further understandings with the umbrella opposition group, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and, more importantly, provide models for a Darfur resolution and begin the process towards democratisation and national elections. However, indications are the regime is leaning toward further intransigence. The signals it is sending on IGAD are mixed at best, suggesting it is stalling in an effort to persuade the international community to relax its Darfur demands. Khartoum also has obstructed the deployment of a sizeable African Union (AU) force with a specific mandate to protect civilians in Darfur, while its effort to link disarmament of Janjaweed militia to the cantonment of the Darfur rebels helped stymie recent AU-mediated talks. While Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, adopted a conciliatory approach before the Security Council on 29 September 2004, pledging cooperation with an AU force, there remains much ambiguity about what that will mean in practice. Khartoum appears to calculate that commercial and sovereignty considerations will ensure that most countries and international institutions will apply no more than rhetorical pressure. It encourages the perception that if serious pressure is applied, it would be counter-productive, giving advantages to putative "hardliners" or even causing the regime to crack, leaving a failed state in its wake. These tactics have served the regime well since it seized power in 1989. The lesson of those fifteen years, however, is that when the government has been the target of serious pressure with a specific objective, it has modified its behaviour. It is a pragmatic regime that will do what it has to in order to survive, including choosing cooperation rather than attempting to impose unilateral solutions. The international community should act on a number of fronts to achieve a comprehensive solution to Sudan's multiple and interconnected problems, one that deals equally with the IGAD peace process and Darfur. The Security Council should give itself further leverage on Darfur by moving quickly to deploy the first elements of the International Commission of Inquiry it established by its resolution of 18 September 2004. If there is not concrete progress on its Darfur demands by the end of October, especially the AU protection force, the Council should impose an arms embargo on the Sudanese government, an assets freeze on companies owned by the ruling party that do business abroad, and a travel ban on senior Sudanese officials. Diplomatic pressure must simultaneously be escalated to produce a swift conclusion on the IGAD (Naivasha) process. The Security Council needs to state clearly that if the parties do not make progress when they resume the IGAD negotiations on 7 October and fail to conclude a final agreement by the end of the year, it will assess responsibility and take appropriate decisions. Other issues must also be addressed, particularly the complications presented by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the brutal Ugandan insurgency whose depredations have often been supported by Khartoum in pursuit of its war aims in the South. Ultimately, the regime must understand that meaningful penalties can only be avoided or removed if it acts quickly and constructively on both the IGAD agreement and Darfur. It should not be allowed to pick and choose which issues, or parts of issues, it wishes to move on, playing these off against others. This is the moment for it to decide its path -- and firmness in New York and key capitals is necessary to inform its choice. Full Report (pdf* format - 117 KB)

AP 5 Oct 2004 Janjaweed Says Sudan Government Pays Them MISTIRIA, Sudan (AP) -- They wear uniforms without insignia, travel a rolling countryside of charred and emptied villages on camels, horses or pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, and call themselves ``the Quick and the Horrible.'' International monitors and non-Arab African farmers who accuse them of raping, killing and burning call them something else: Janjaweed. Fighters at this stronghold -- visited by journalists Tuesday for the first time since Darfur's war began -- belong to the government-allied Arab militia that international monitors blame for the worst atrocities of the 20-month-old war. The Darfur war has killed more than 50,000 people and driven 1.4 million others from their homes. Almost all of the displaced are non-Arab Africans, targets of what the United States says is a genocidal campaign by Khartoum's Arab-dominated government. Sudan is accused of coordinating military aerial bombing runs with ground raids by the Arab militia in the attacks on Darfur's non-Arab villages, although all sides say mass attacks on civilians have eased under international scrutiny. The Sudanese government describes its allies in Darfur as militias hastily organized to defend against rebels. The fighters known as Janjaweed, it says, are renegades and bandits, and it has no ties to those men. But international organizations and the victims of the violence say the fighters in Mistiria are the Janjaweed. The fighters in Mistiria said Tuesday they have close ties to the government -- in coordination, sympathies and the salaries of about $20 a month they collect. ``The government called on us to defend our land, and the tribes responded,'' said fighter Ina Saleh, a member of the Arab Rizigat tribe, wearing a uniform with no marks or name tag. ``We responded, like the other tribes.'' Mistiria, in northern Darfur, 16 miles west of the town of Kabkabiyeh, is identified by foreign governments and international rights groups as the birthplace of the Janjaweed. In February 2003, Sudan's government sent out a plea for fighters to help combat two non-Arab rebel groups that had taken up arms in western Darfur, the international community says, in accounts backed up by the fighters. Arab tribal leader Musa Hilal, who lived in Mistiria, answered that plea, rallying men of several Arab tribes, training them and arming them, they say. In all, some 2,000 tribal fighters responded to the government call, most from Hilal's tribe, said Omer el Amin, a lawyer in Kabkabiyeh representing Hilal and other men now accused as alleged Janjaweed. In Mistiria, they called themselves the Border Intelligence Division, and answered to Hilal, el Amin said. The same group also calls itself the Second Reconnaissance Brigade, or the Quick and the Horrible, say officers of the African Union, a 53-nation bloc whose monitors are inspecting compliance with a repeatedly violated cease-fire. None of the fighters identify themselves as Janjaweed. The term is used by the international community for some of the Arab militia fighters, including Hilal's, but is seen here as an insult, reserved for bandits before Darfur's conflict began. With heavy international attention to accusations of genocide committed by the Janjaweed, Hilal is now in seclusion in the capital, under close watch by Sudanese officials, those in contact with him say. The Border Intelligence Division, once spread out along Darfur's border with Chad, has pulled much of its strength back to Mistiria. Government forces are firmly in control here, and the men allegedly recruited by Hilal are safe from any rebel attack and most outside scrutiny, other than the African Union monitors. On Tuesday, men identifying themselves as members of the Border Intelligence group lolled in the shade of an open-sided shelter at the brigade's headquarters, while their leaders met with the cease-fire monitors. A handful of the fighters interviewed under scrutiny of their field commanders and Sudanese military officers variously said they were part of civil patrols, known as mujahedeen -- holy warriors -- or part of the regular military. The men and their officers said they were supplied and paid by the central government, but some, like fighter Mohamed Hamdan, could not identify their commanders in the military. Hamdan contradicted himself repeatedly about when he joined his unit; he and Saleh both initially gave dates years in advance of Darfur's conflict. Both eventually said, however, that they took up arms in response to a government call to fight in 2003, when Darfur's rebel groups rose up. ``The government called us to defend,'' said Hamdan, a member of the Arab Mahmeed tribe. As he spoke, men identifying themselves as members of the division strolled the town's weekly market, where camels for sale crowded together. Their local leader, Sgt. Abdul Waheed Saeed, stood among the stalls, answering journalists' questions about whether he and his men feared international prosecution as accused Janjaweed. ``If I'm given to the court, I'll be given with all the government,'' Saeed said. ``Because we are all doing this together.''

Reuters 5 Oct 2004 UN Council Shies Away from Oil Sanctions on Sudan UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday focused on African Union troops as a way out of the Darfur crisis, ignoring its earlier threat of oil sanctions against Sudan for atrocities against civilians. U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, the most critical envoy of Khartoum on the council, said it was important to get as many African troops as possible in Darfur. The council last month had threatened sanctions if Sudan did not take action to protect civilians. But Danforth told reporters, ``I think right now we have to keep our eye on the ball,'' adding: ``The focus now is on the African Union. Danforth spoke after the 15-member council was briefed by Jan Pronk, the special U.N. envoy in Sudan, who drafted a report issued late on Monday under U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's name. Pronk told the council in an open briefing that the Sudanese government had not improved security for African civilians in Darfur or prosecuted perpetrators of atrocities as the council had demanded. He said the cease-fire between rebels and the government was broken constantly but that militia, allied with the government, caused most of the civilian deaths in early September. ``Toward the end of the month militia attacks became less frequent,'' he said. ``In the same period, however, armed banditry rose at an alarming rate, endangering both the local population and aid convoys.'' Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of skirmishes between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over land and water in an area as large as France. ARAB MILITIA The government turned to the Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, to help suppress the rebels. Many African villagers were killed, raped and robbed. Some 1.4 million people have been uprooted from their homes and 50,000 have died, Sudan's ambassador, Elfatih Erwa, told reporters his country had agreed to let in about 3,500 African Union troops, police and observers, whose very presence is to prevent further abuses. He also wondered if the United States was serious about labeling the crisis genocide, saying that would force them to send in troops rather than use the Darfur conflict ``for political reasons.'' Pronk called for a political solution in Sudan, especially in the separate crisis in the south where Khartoum has promised a peace pact for years to end the 21-year-old civil war. Pronk and Danforth believe a deal in the south would serve as a blueprint for Darfur. In Annan's report on Darfur as well as Pronk's presentation, the United Nations said Sudan had not gone back on any earlier commitments but did not say what they were. However, Annan's report said the government made no further progress in September in stopping attacks on civilians, disarming militias, and prosecuting perpetrators of abuse. ``Today, still increasing numbers of the population of Darfur are exposed, without any protection from the government, to hunger, fear and violence,'' Annan said. ``It goes without saying that implementing Security Council resolutions is obligatory.'' On humanitarian aid, the U.N. report said the situation had deteriorated since the end of August because more and more people were affected by the fighting. Earlier fears that the number of people touched by the conflict could reach two million ``are close to being realized,'' requiring aid groups to feed and shelter more people than they helped in August, it said.

BBC 12 Oct 2004 Landmine kills Darfur aid workers Some 1.4 million people have been displaced in the conflict Two aid workers have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region after their vehicle hit a landmine. The two, one British, the other from Sudan, were working for the UK's Save the Children agency, when they died in rebel-held territory near Ummbaru. This is reported to be the first death of a western aid worker in the 20-month conflict, which has pitted black Africans against Arab militias. An estimated 50,000 people have died in what some say is a genocide. Some 1.4 million have also been made homeless as a result of attacks by pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias. The Janjaweed are accused of killing thousands of black African civilians and emptying villages as part of a campaign against rebels in Darfur. Walked for help "The victims of the blast were humanitarians, whose presence in Darfur was motivated by the wish to assist people affected by the conflict," said Jan Pronk, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative to Sudan. He said that both the Sudanese army and the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) had been notified of the trip. "No words are sufficient to describe the loss of two valued colleagues whose work and efforts in North Darfur brought much to many children and their families caught up in this crisis," said Save the Children director general Mike Aaronson. "At this time our thoughts go out to the families of our colleagues." The two aid workers have not been identified following the explosion, which happened on Sunday. "Another Sudanese worker was injured in the incident and walked several miles to the nearest town to get help. The two others died in the vehicle," said a Save the Children spokeswoman. There are some 700 international aid workers in Darfur, along with thousands of Sudanese. Violence continues Mr Pronk last week told the UN's Security Council that Sudan's government has failed to keep its promise to end violence in Darfur over the past month. He said attacks on civilians continued and that both pro-government forces and rebel groups had broken a truce. Mr Pronk said the army had continued its attacks, sometimes with helicopter gunships and neither the government nor the rebels had respected the ceasefire signed on 8 April. Sudan has now said it will welcome more troops from the African Union. But the UN envoy said these troops should not only monitor the ceasefire but ensure the safety of the displaced, oversee the disarming of fighters and act as a buffer between civilians and possible attackers. Libya is planning to host a mini-summit on the Darfur crisis later in October.

BBC 12 Oct 2004 Thousands more flee Darfur homes A month of fresh violence in the Sudanese region of Darfur has driven more than 200,000 people from their homes, the United Nations has said. Insecurity is also blocking aid to the 1.5 million displaced people inside the region, according to the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan. Manuel Aranda Da Silva said robberies of aid workers were on the rise. The UN has threatened Sudan with sanctions if it fails to halt violence in Darfur, scene of a recent rebellion. Security is probably becoming the main constraint to the delivering of humanitarian assistance Manuel Aranda Da Silva UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed a panel this month to investigate reports of genocide in Darfur, a remote, arid region the size of France where some 50,000 people have died in the past 18 months. The government is accused of failing to rein in the Janjaweed, an ethnic Arab militia blamed for killing thousands of black African civilians and emptying villages as part of a campaign against local rebels. The deaths in a landmine blast of two aid workers, a Briton and his Sudanese colleague, have highlighted the dangers facing humanitarian agencies. Dangerous trend Aid efforts a few months ago were hampered by logistical problems but now insecurity seems to be the chief obstacle, Mr Da Silva told Reuters news agency in Khartoum. "Security is probably becoming the main constraint to the delivering of humanitarian assistance in Darfur." There had, he added, been a "negative trend" of armed robberies against humanitarian workers in Darfur in the past three weeks. "This is a general trend that we are worried about," he said. Despite a fragile ceasefire signed between the government and the rebels in April, ethnic conflict, attacks on civilians and clashes between Sudanese armed forces and rebels have all increased, Mr Da Silva said. The UN panel appointed by Mr Annan has been given three months to report back on the situation . The US has already spoken of genocide in Darfur while human rights organisations have said attacks on civilians there amount to war crimes.

NYT 16 Oct2004 U.N. Says Sudan Death Toll Reaches 70,000 By WARREN HOGE UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 15 - The United Nations health agency said Friday that the death toll in refugee camps in the Darfur region of Sudan had reached 70,000, and that people would continue dying at the rate of 10,000 a month as long as the international community did not provide more money. David Nabarro, director of the crisis action group of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, said despite the international attention Darfur had attracted, the United Nations was not receiving the money it needed to curb deaths caused by malnutrition and disease. "Every day in newspapers in the U.S., Europe and Japan, there is coverage of the suffering in Darfur, yet we don't have a significant enough popular perception around the world of the enormity of that suffering, and the United Nations cannot get the funding for this priority program," Mr. Nabarro said in a telephone interview. The United Nations has received only half of the $300 million it needs, he said, while with full financing it could reduce the current mortality rate by half. At United Nations headquarters, the United States was discussing moving Security Council meetings on Sudan to Nairobi next month, when it will hold the rotating presidency of the Council. American diplomats said the purpose would be to speed the conclusion of talks in Kenya aimed at ending a decades-long civil war in the south of Sudan. The American ambassador, John C. Danforth, was President Bush's special envoy to those talks, and the United Nations believes that getting a peace agreement put into effect in the south would help resolve the conflict in Darfur, in western Sudan. Several Security Council ambassadors said Mr. Danforth had discussed the suggestion with them and was receiving support for it. Asked about the proposal, Richard A. Grenell, Mr. Danforth's spokesman, would say only that "during the month of November, while we hold the presidency, we are exploring ways to highlight the Sudan issue." The conflict in Darfur has forced 1.4 million villagers from their homes into displacement camps, and 200,000 of them have fled across the border to Chad. The United States has said that the government-supported killings and mass evictions constitute genocide, and Secretary General Kofi Annan has created an international commission to compile a report in three months on whether genocide has occurred. Mr. Nabarro said that because of a lack of money, relief workers in Darfur were unable to distribute aid in helicopters and had to rely on trucks, which broke down. He said the agency needed 10 charter aircraft but could only afford four. The agency has been borrowing money to meet its needs of $1.5 million a month, he said, but could not continue doing so past mid-December. "We are running on a threadbare, hand-to-mouth existence, and if the plight of these people in Darfur is as important to the international community as it seems to be, then we would have expected more long-term support," he said.

NYT 16 Oct 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST The Dead Walk By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF ALONG THE CHAD-SUDAN BORDER — In June I wrote several columns about Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a young Sudanese woman whose parents and husband had