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 دارفور ... بوتين يبيع الأسلحة للجانجويد !!
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Save Darfur Coalition
News Summary
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 Thursday October 28, 2004 8:46 AM
AP Photo KHT101
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Leaders representing over 100 million Christians, Muslims and Jews urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan to report the number of deaths and rapes in Sudan's Darfur region daily to highlight what they say is genocide.
Nobel peace laureate Eli Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who led the delegation, said not enough is being done to end the conflict that has killed at least 70,000 people and forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes, creating what U.N. officials say is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
The representatives of the major faiths saw the secretary-general Wednesday ``to tell him of our pain, of our anguish, of our outrage at the situation in Darfur, where people are dying day after day, in the hundreds, in the thousands,'' Wiesel said.
During the meeting, he said, the delegation raised the idea of U.N. personnel in Darfur reporting daily on how many people were killed.
Hannah Rosenthal of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said that ``one way to educate the public and to demand an end to silence is to frame the issue - not one group against another, not whether or not it fits a diplomatic definition, but how many people are being killed, starved, raped.''
The delegation was ``very thrilled'' to hear that the U.N. Security Council will be traveling to Nairobi, Kenya, to hold a meeting Nov. 18-19 focusing on Sudan. ``And that will be in 10,000 deaths (timewise), and that's how we want to frame the issue,'' she said.
Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization, said in September that as many as 10,000 refugees a month were dying in camps. But it has been difficult for aid agencies and the U.N. to provide a more precise death toll because they have been unable to travel throughout Darfur, a dangerous region the size of France.
It was Annan's first meeting on Darfur with interfaith leaders, many of whom are also members of the Save Darfur Coalition, which represents over 100 faith-based and civic organizations working to mobilize efforts to end the conflict.
The coalition was formed in July after an emergency summit on Darfur convened by the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which teaches about past failures to prevent genocide.
Wiesel said Annan highlighted the need for money for Darfur and urged the religious leaders to work with governments to raise awareness.
``I really believe if people knew, then good people would try to intervene,'' Wiesel said. ``For me, the indifference of the past is a source of anguish and despair. We ... say no more indifference. Wherever and whenever people kill other people, and people die, we must, must be sensitive to their pain and to their death.''
Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, chairman of the justice committee of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York, said it had worked with the Islamic Circle of North America to set up a charity four months ago to collect money and clothing for Darfur.
Support for the people in Darfur exists ``not only throughout the Muslim world but among the 7 to 8 million Muslims who are American citizens,'' he said.
The crisis began in February 2003 when two black African rebel groups took up arms over alleged unjust treatment by the Sudanese government and ethnic Arab countrymen. Pro-government militias called Janjaweed reacted by unleashing attacks on villages.
Bishop William Murphy of the U.S. Catholic Conference, which represents about 60 million Catholics, said the Catholic Relief Service has already spent $2 million in Darfur on food and bedding.
``There is a huge response from the American Jewish community,'' said Ruth Messenger, executive director of the American Jewish World Service. ``We know of about $650,000 that we've raised that is going to support humanitarian efforts in both Sudan and Chad.''
``We are encouraged by the request from the secretary-general that we keep the pressure on - and that he will keep public information before the public,'' she said.
Anthony Kireopoulos of the National Council of Churches, which represents some 50 million Christians in the United States, said all the religious groups consider what is happening in Darfur a genocide that is taking place ``as we speak, in slow motion.''
Annan, however, has appointed a five-member international commission to investigate whether a genocide had occurred. The panel, named in early October, is expected to report in three months.
Wiesel said Annan told the delegation ``we should be really careful with the word and wait'' for the commission's finding because ``once you use the word it's very difficult to take it back.''
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U.N. Plans Meeting in Africa on Sudan
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 27, 2004
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 - With a 15-to-0 vote, the Security Council adopted a United States-sponsored resolution on Tuesday to hold two days of meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, next month as a way of focusing attention on the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
"It's an opportunity for the Security Council to demonstrate to all sides in Sudan that the international community is not going to go away, that the international community is going to continue to be concerned about that country for the long term," said John C. Danforth, the American ambassador, who served as President Bush's special envoy to Sudan.
The crisis stems from a civil war in southern Sudan and from a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Arab militias against African villagers in Darfur, a campaign the United States has called genocide. The conflict has left more than 1.5 million people homeless and, according to the World Food Program, has killed about 70,000 people through hunger and disease. United Nations officials have said the insecurity threatens the delivery of emergency food aid.
According to the United States mission, the Security Council has met only three times outside New York since the 1952 opening of United Nations headquarters - in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1972; in Panama City a year later; and in Geneva in 1990.
For the Record: Oct. 28, 2004, Thursday
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Darfur talks falter over security
Talks aimed at finding a solution to the Darfur crisis in western Sudan have been abruptly postponed.
The Sudan Liberation Movement says it will no longer talk directly to the government until its security concerns are addressed.
The group says the 3,000-strong African Union (AU) force, to begin deployment in Darfur on Thursday, is not enough.
Meanwhile, a UN envoy says violence on the ground, which has already displaced 1.5 million people, is increasing.
An estimated 70,000 people have died as a result of the conflict, which the United States has termed genocide, since it began in February 2003.
Mandate
Speaking in Khartoum, UN envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk said both sides were violating the ceasefire and human rights violations continued in Darfur.
"We are in a dilemma of increasing difficulties on the ground, increasing fighting, increasing numbers of people fleeing... but it's more difficult to help them because of the violence," he said.
Mr Pronk welcomed the expanded AU force because he said they were coming on a new mandate, not simply to monitor the ceasefire.
"It is a big step forward. They will not be able to protect, but by their presence they can help to prevent, to take action, to mediate and be much more active than just investigating what has happened," he said.
Sudan has agreed to the deployment of the AU force, but is opposed to any attempt to change its role to one of peacekeeping.
Go-between
AU-chaired peace talks taking place in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, between the Sudanese government and two rebel groups, broke up after a couple of minutes on Wednesday morning.
SLM spokesman Mahgoub Hussain said more AU troops were needed to ensure security on the ground and accused the government of fresh bombing raids
He also said unless UN resolutions were strictly adhered to and the Janjaweed militia quickly disarmed, the rebel group would not negotiate face-to-face with the Sudanese government.
The last round of the negotiations ended in September with no results.
According to the BBC's Yusuf Sarki Mohamed in Abuja, mediations efforts will now fall to the AU to act as a go-between.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian military confirmed that Nigerian troops would be deployed to Darfur on Thursday.
"US planes will fly 41 Nigerian soldiers to Sudan tomorrow morning to beef up troops already on the ground," Colonel Ganiyu Adewale was quoted by French news agency AFP as saying on Wednesday.
He said there was no date yet for when two more companies of almost 400 men will go.
An airlift of Rwandan troops to Darfur planned for Monday is now due to take place on Saturday.
Rwandan troops are preparing to fly in from Kigali
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U.N. Plans Meeting in Africa on Sudan
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 27, 2004
For the Record
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 - With a 15-to-0 vote, the Security Council adopted a United States-sponsored resolution on Tuesday to hold two days of meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, next month as a way of focusing attention on the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
"It's an opportunity for the Security Council to demonstrate to all sides in Sudan that the international community is not going to go away, that the international community is going to continue to be concerned about that country for the long term," said John C. Danforth, the American ambassador, who served as President Bush's special envoy to Sudan.
The crisis stems from a civil war in southern Sudan and from a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Arab militias against African villagers in Darfur, a campaign the United States has called genocide. The conflict has left more than 1.5 million people homeless and, according to the World Food Program, has killed about 70,000 people through hunger and disease. United Nations officials have said the insecurity threatens the delivery of emergency food aid.
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According to the United States mission, the Security Council has met only three times outside New York since the 1952 opening of United Nations headquarters - in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1972; in Panama City a year later; and in Geneva in 1990.
For the Record: Oct. 28, 2004, Thursday
An article on Monday about new guerrilla factions in the Sudan region of Darfur misattributed the estimate that 70,000 people had died from hunger and disease in Darfur refugee camps. (Because of an editing error, the error was repeated yesterday in an article about the Security Council's plan to convene a two-day meeting in Kenya to focus attention on the crisis.) The figure was from the World Health Organization, not the World Food Program.
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Sudan: Malnutrition Widespread in Darfur - WFP
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
October 27, 2004
Posted to the web October 27, 2004
Nairobi Almost 22 percent of children under the age of five in Darfur, western Sudan, are malnourished and close to half of all families do not have enough food, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) told IRIN on Tuesday.
The situation was particularly serious among internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to a comprehensive nutrition and food security assessment conducted in August and September among IDPs and other Darfur residents. Results of the survey, conducted by WFP in collaboration with other agencies, were released on Tuesday
At the time of the survey, food aid already played a critical role by reaching 70 percent of households among Darfur's 1.45 million IDPs and 20 percent of resident households in conflict-affected areas, WFP said.
A total of 24 percent of IDPs were found to be critically short of food.
The situation is extremely worrying", Peter Smerdon, spokesperson of the WFP, told IRIN. "The malnutrition rate for children in Darfur under the age of five is 21.8 percent - a figure well beyond the 15-percent rate regarded as indicating a serious situation - and a total of 3.9 percent of children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
"What is most alarming", Smerdon added, "is that none of the seriously malnourished children of families we surveyed received the therapeutic care they needed at special feeding centres. Besides a problem of capacity, we also found that many women with sick children simply did not know that these centres exist."
The assessment mission recommended the provision of life-saving, general food rations for 94 percent of IDPs and in addition, supplementary feeding for all children under five and all pregnant and lactating women.
However, the report added that increasing food aid alone could not reduce malnutrition. A basic minimum public-health package, including adequate supplies of clean water and medicine, needed to accompany food and nutrition aid.
The survey was conducted in the three Darfur states - Northern, Southern and Western Darfur. WFP collected data on more than 5,000 people at 56 sites in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US and UK branches of Save the Children. It was also supported by Sudan's Ministries of Health and Agriculture and its Humanitarian Aid Commission.
In September, WFP fed more than 1.3-million people in Darfur, representing 78 percent of conflict-affected people in areas accessible to UN agencies at the time, the UN agency said. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) fed approximately 100,000 other people in areas of Darfur rated as 'no-go' by UN Security.
An ICRC assessment team, which had evaluated the food security situation in 20 rural villages in September, concluded that rural communities across Darfur were facing a food crisis that could be worse than the famines that hit the region in the 1980s and 1990s.
The ICRC team reported that agriculture had collapsed, and a combination of insecurity and drought had destroyed traditional coping mechanisms of communities in Darfur. In many cases, farmers' seeds and tools had been looted and their cattle stolen.
On Tuesday, Japan decided to offer US $11.5 million in grants to help refugees affected by the conflict in Darfur. The money will go to four international organizations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF, and is meant for the improvement of the hygiene and medical conditions of IDPs in Darfur and others who fled to Chad. The Japanese Foreign Ministry is also considering food aid and assistance aimed at increasing local food production.
The war in Darfur pits Sudanese government troops and militias allegedly allied to the government against rebels fighting to end what they have called marginalisation and discrimination of the region's inhabitants by the state.
The conflict has displaced an estimated 1.45 million people and sent another 200,000 fleeing across the border into Chad. The UN has described the Darfur problem as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
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Sudan: 70,000 Darfur IDPs Reportedly Taken Back to Their Homes
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
October 25, 2004
Posted to the web October 25, 2004
Nairobi
Jan Pronk, the UN special envoy to Sudan, met with Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail on Thursday to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN on Friday.
"Ismail provided Pronk with an update on the measures the government of Sudan had taken to end impunity in Darfur," Achouri said. "A number of people, including Janjawid militia, have been arrested, while 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur were claimed to have been repatriated
She said that Pronk took note of the number of people who had been returned to their homes, but he needed more information to establish whether this had occurred on a voluntary basis.
"He was particularly concerned that neither the UN High Commissioner for Refugees nor the UN Organisation for Migration had been consulted prior to the repatriation, as had been agreed upon earlier," Achouri added
In response, the government of Sudan invited the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Manuel Ananda da Silva, to verify the repatriation process on the ground in Darfur.
It was the last joint-implementation meeting before the UN special envoy was due to give his monthly report to the UN Security Council on Darfur. On the basis of this report, the Council will decide whether further international actions are necessary.
The African Union (AU) agreed on Wednesday to boost the number of peacekeepers in Darfur and to send in a civilian police force, Said Djinnit, head of the AU's Peace and Security Council, told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The deployment of the armed force, which would number over 3,000, was expected in a matter of weeks he said. The one-year mission would be made up of 2,241 troops, of whom 450 would be military observers, and 815 civilian police. There would also be 164 support staff. The AU currently has fewer than 400 troops in the region.
Djinnit told reporters that the exact rules of engagement for the AU force had yet to be drawn up. The force would also investigate violations of the humanitarian ceasefire and provide a visible military presence to stop armed groups like the Janjawid militias from attacking civilians.
Achouri called the decision of the AU "a real break-through" and she said to be "very hopeful that the new AU forces, with an expanded mandate, will lead to real change on the ground in Darfur".
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Putin Bans Weapons Sales to Janjaweed, Unofficial Groups in Sudan
Created: 25.10.2004 13:57 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:57 MSK
MosNews
Vladmir Putin has signed a decree banning the sale of all weapons to non-government bodies in Sudan, including the Janjaweed armed groups that have been accused by the international community of genocide in the southern province of Darfur.
The Russian president signed the document “On measures to implement UN Security Council resolution 1556 of 30 July 2004” on Monday, gauging fears his trade with the African state was fueling ethnic strife there by supplying weapons used to kill civilians.
Sudan was billed as Russia’s biggest arms client — since 2002, it has procured MiG-29 fighter-jets, Mi-24 attack helicopters and a range of weapons and munitions.
But Russian weapons sales to Sudan — which were labeled a “model in the use of Russian military platforms to quell an African insurgency” by Middle Eastern news agencies — have sparked concern that the weapons are being used by the Janjaweed in raids against civilians in Darfur to quell what Sudan has called an uprising, but what international groups are saying is genocide.
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EU to provide $100 million for Sudan aid
Saturday, October 23, 2004 Posted: 7:18 PM EDT (2318 GMT
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) -- The European Union and its member states will contribute more than $100 million to an African Union (AU) force in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Saturday.
"The EU will contribute to the Darfur mission $100 million and more will be provided by member states covering over half of the required $221 million budget," he told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa where the 53-member AU is headquartered.
The United Nations has called the Darfur violence the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 1.5 million people have been made homeless and tens of thousands have died in the arid, impoverished western region.
Solana said the final decision on funding would be made at a meeting of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, in Brussels on Monday. The money would come out of an EU Peace Fund which has set aside some $300 million for the AU.
He said the EU would also provide the AU with support staff and logistical help, but gave no further details.
Solana's announcement comes three days after the AU's Peace and Security Council agreed to send more than 3,000 extra troops to Darfur to help restore security and monitor a faltering truce between rebels and government forces.
Three U.S. Air Force cargo planes and 120 U.S. troops landed in Rwanda on Saturday to carry Rwandan soldiers and equipment to Darfur as part of the expanded AU mission.
Several dozen soldiers unloaded boxes full of rifles and hand guns on the tarmac of Kigali airport on the outskirts of the capital, before loading them with ammunition
In the first U.S. military deployment in the Darfur conflict, the three C-130 planes from the Air Force's 86th Airlift Wing left Germany on Friday. They are expected to fly a battalion of Rwandan troops to Darfur over the next two weeks.
There are currently only 300 AU soldiers in Darfur, an area the size of France, who are tasked with protecting 150 AU ceasefire monitors.
The conflict erupted in early 2003 when two rebel groups, accusing the government of neglect, launched a revolt following years of skirmishes between African farmers and Arab nomads over land.
The rebels say the government has used horse-mounted Arab militias known as Janjaweed to put down their rebellion and loot and burn African villages. The Sudanese government admits arming some militias to fight the rebels but denies links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.
The United Nations estimates 70,000 people have died from malnutrition and disease in the last seven months, although the Sudanese government disputes this.
AU officials hope a fresh round of peace talks between the rebels and government officials may begin on Monday after a transport mix-up left many rebel delegates stranded across the continent earlier this week.
Members of the U.S. Air Force load cargo Friday that will aid the African Union's mission in Sudan.
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