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POLITICS: Sudan Accused of Thwarting U.N. Darfur Mission

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 15 2007 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Thursday accused the Sudanese government of reneging on a promise to issue visas to a high-level United Nations fact-finding mission due to leave for Darfur to assess the human rights situation in the politically and militarily troubled region.

“The visa problem was very much of a disappointment for me,” Ban told reporters.

This is an issue, he said, he had personally discussed with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during their recent meeting in Addis Ababa. The Sudanese president had promised he would issue visas to the fact-finding team.

“He said he would have no problem (about issuing visas). I am very much disappointed by the decision of the Sudanese government,” the secretary-general added.

The six-member high-level U.N. mission, headed by the 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, was expected to visit Darfur to investigate widespread charges of human rights abuses and genocide.

The mission, which was established following a consensus vote at a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council last December, has completed its preliminary investigations in Addis Ababa and was scheduled to go to Darfur this week.

In a statement issued Thursday in Addis Ababa, a spokesman for the mission said “the mission can no longer allow the continued uncertainty regarding visas from Sudan to impede” its work.

Williams said the mission will proceed and collect all relevant information from locations outside Sudan. “The mission’s report to the Human Rights Council will be presented as mandated,” she added.

So far, it has held several meetings with experts, non-governmental organisations, human rights specialists, and U.N. and African Union (AU) officials.

Other members of the mission include Sima Samar, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan; Mart Nutt, member of the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance; and Professor Bertrand Ramcharan, former acting U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On Thursday, the secretary-general made one last appeal: “I urge again that the Sudanese Government fully cooperates with the unanimous decision of the Human Rights Council.”

In an open challenge to Bashir, Ban also said that “if the Sudanese president believes there is no problem, then he should be able to receive the human rights fact-finding mission.”

Meanwhile, the Sudanese president is also accused of reneging on another promise: to permit a “hybrid” United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force into Darfur.

At onetime, the United Nations wanted the current 7,000-strong, ill-equipped AU force – the African Union Mission in Darfur (AMIS) – to be transformed into a larger 12,700- strong U.N. force comprising 10,500 military personnel and 2,200 civilian police personnel.

But this was opposed by the Sudanese president. As a compromise, the proposed peacekeeping force was to be a hybrid U.N.-AU force. But the deployment of this force has also been very slow due to bureaucratic delays.

Asked about the delay, the secretary-general told reporters Thursday: “This continuing deteriorating situation in Darfur is just unacceptable, and I am still awaiting an official reply from President Bashir to my letter of 24 January, which outlines our detailed positions on (military) force generation, command and control and funding.”

With an affirmative answer, he said, “we can pave the way immediately to the introduction of an AU/UN hybrid mission.”

Ban is also expecting a report on the deployment from his Special Envoy Jan Eliasson.

“The political process covers all this hybrid peacekeeping operation and he (Eliasson) was instructed by me to discuss all the matters concerning the staffing issue. Im still waiting for his report,” Ban said.

Bashir agreed to permit a hybrid force because he said he had no confidence on a full-fledged U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur.

Last year, he was quoted as saying that U.N. troops will be permitted into his country “only over my dead body.”

“These are colonial forces,” he said of the proposed U.N. peacekeeping mission. “We will not allow colonial forces into the country.”

According to published figures, between 200,000 and 500,000 people – mostly members of three African ethnic groups – have died in Darfur and more than two million more uprooted from their homes over the past nearly four years.

In a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush last week, David Rubenstein, director of the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ said: “It is not an exaggeration to fear that the degradation of the humanitarian situation in Darfur may soon result in a catastrophe dwarfing all that has gone before.”

The coalition, which represents some 180 church, human rights, and community groups, has called for a series of measures to halt the violence in Darfur, including targeted sanctions against the Sudanese leadership.