The UN envoy to Sudan said Wednesday that the Sudanese government has stopped militia attacks on villages in the crisis-ridden Darfur region and is making progress in improving security there.
The Sudanese foreign minister insisted that the government is not responsible for the crisis, as thousands of angry pro-government demonstrators, including government ministers and religious leaders, marched in Khartoum, the capital, against calls for foreign intervention.
“This war was started by the rebels, not by the government. So the rebels should be held responsible,” Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told the British Broadcasting Corp.
The African Union has committed 300 soldiers to help enforce a cease-fire, but no country has supported military intervention.
The UN Security Council last week threatened that measures could be taken–implying sanctions–if Sudan did not meet a 30-day deadline for showing significant progress in disarming and prosecuting the militias, which are accused of committing atrocities against civilians.
Hundreds of Sudanese are dying of hunger and disease daily in camps in Darfur, in the country’s west, and in neighboring Chad. More than 1 million people were displaced after the pro-government militias, known as Janjaweed, attacked villages, burning, raping and killing. Human-rights groups say the government is using the Janjaweed to drive villagers from their land and give it to tribes loyal to Khartoum.
Aid agencies have estimated that tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, though no reliable figures are available.
Jan Pronk, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative on Darfur, said Wednesday that Sudan is not expected to fully disarm the militias by the deadline but had to show progress by then.
“They have deployed many more policemen in the region and they have stopped their own military activities against villagers,” Pronk told the BBC. He said security in the displaced-persons camps has improved.
The government announced this week that it would double the number of police deployed in Darfur, to 12,000. But security in the region remains poor, said Francis Deng, Annan’s representative on internal displacement, who visited there last week.
The African Union regional bloc reported last week that militias continued to loot and burn villages in Darfur.
