Global Policy Forum

Forces backing the Khartoum government have violated a four-day-old ceasefire in Sudan's western Darfur region, killing 32 civilians, a Sudanese rebel group charged. Colonel Abdallah Abdel Karim, military spokesman of the Justice and Equality Movement (MJE), said pro-government Janjawid militiamen and army troops had torched villages northwest of the Darfur state capital Geneina near the border with Chad on Wednesday.

Karim, who was speaking to AFP in the Gabonese capital Libreville by satellite telephone and said he was in Darfur, added that 32 people allegedly killed in the raids were "mostly women, elderly and children". The claim could not be independently confirmed. Several official sources in the Chadian capital Ndjamena said they were unaware of the alleged raids, while observers said criminal attacks might have been carried out by unruly soldiers.

Allami Ahmat, diplomatic counsellor to Chadian President Idriss Deby, said Ndjamena had had no official report of the attack. "We have no knowledge of an attack whatsoever," he told AFP. "We are surprised by this information, especially since there are MJE and MLS military representatives in Ndjamena who are in contact with the border and haven't told us about this attack," Ahmat added.

In a surprise truce agreed last week under Chadian mediation, the government and rebels from the MJE and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) pledged to guarantee safe passage for humanitarian aid to Darfur, free prisoners of war and disarm Arab militias blamed for most of the violence there. The ceasefire, which began on Sunday and is renewable every 45 days, is the third since the conflict broke out 14 months ago. The first two were short-lived. The conflict, which the United Nations says is currently the world's worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, has claimed more than 10,000 lives and displaced some 670,000 people within Sudan, while another 100,000 have fled to eastern Chad.

A civilian commission to monitor compliance with the truce was mandated under the government-rebel agreement but has yet to be set up. Human rights groups and the United States on Wednesday urged the urgent creation of the commission. Human Rights Watch and the International Federation for Human Rights on Wednesday accused Khartoum of carrying out a "massive terror campaign" in Darfur.

The ceasefire was a "welcome first step but requires immediate and rigorous international monitoring to avert a humanitarian disaster and continued civilian displacement," said the New York-based Human Rights Watch. Karim said the MJE's president was "taking steps to inform the mediators" of the alleged ceasefire violation. But he repeated his rebel group's misgivings over the Chadian mediators in the conflict, charging that Chadian soldiers had tried to arrest members of an MJE delegation in Chad, seizing their valuables when they went to the town of Tine-Chad near the border with Sudan to meet with Sudanese refugees.

"Regarding the mediation, we have always said that the Chadian government was not impartial. We reaffirm the same thing," Karim said. "If there is no change in attitude, the MJE will have to ask the international community to transfer the negotiations to a neutral country." A new round of mediation over the Darfur conflict is set for next Tuesday in the Chadian capital to discuss political issues and seek a "definitive settlement" to the conflict. A Chadian mediator said he hoped a parallel meeting would be held to set up the ceasefire monitoring commission.