Global Policy Forum

By Amil Khan and Mohamed Abdellah

The Arab League said yesterday it opposes sanctions against Sudan, which faces a United Nations embargo if it does not try to rein in militias in the western Darfur region.

Sudan has about three weeks left to demonstrate that it is serious about disarming Arab militias in Darfur, where the UN estimates violence has killed 50,000, or face sanctions under a UN Security Council resolution. But the Arab League said sanctions "would only result in negative effects for the whole Sudanese people and complicate the crisis in Darfur." First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha of Sudan told the BBC that Sudan was doing its best to meet the deadline, but "due to logistical problems and limitations we have at the moment, I don't think the time frame is practical."

Darfur rebels accuse Khartoum of sending the Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, to crush their uprising and force non-Arabs off their land. The US Congress has called the Janjaweed campaign genocide. Fighting in Darfur has displaced 1 million people and left 2 million short of food and medicine, creating what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The Cairo-based Arab League, where Arab ministers yesterday held an emergency meeting on Darfur, rejected in a statement hints of any "forced foreign military intervention in the area." Britain and Australia have said they could send troops to Darfur.

Khartoum and the UN have agreed on a plan to disarm the Janjaweed and other outlawed groups, improve security in Darfur, and address the humanitarian crisis. Jan Pronk, the UN secretary general's special representative to Sudan, told the meeting it was also the responsibility of two Darfur rebel groups to contribute to security and to "exercise restraint." "The government of Sudan has made commitments; the ball is in the government of Sudan's court to fulfill those commitments," he added.

A long-smoldering conflict between nomadic Arab herders and African villagers erupted in early 2003 when the Darfur rebels took up arms against Khartoum. Efforts to bring the parties to negotiations broke down in July when Khartoum would not meet rebels' terms for talks. The Arab League called on the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Army to drop those terms, which included the disarmament of the Janjaweed. The African Union said yesterday that Khartoum and the two rebel groups had agreed to resume talks in Nigeria on Aug. 23. Sudan Liberation Army leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur said he would send a high-level delegation to the talks, but Justice and Equality Movement Secretary General Bahar Idriss Abu Garda said rebel leaders were due at a conference in Germany on Aug. 23. The African Union said its chairman, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, would mediate the talks between Khartoum and the rebels, resuming a dialogue started in Addis Ababa on July 15. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail of Sudan said the government would participate in the talks without conditions.

The 53-member African Union is proposing to send as many as 2,000 troops to protect its cease-fire monitors in Darfur and serve as peacekeepers. But Sudan said Saturday that while African troops could protect African Union monitors, government troops would handle peacekeeping duties.

The Arab League called on its members, especially those who are also part of the African Union, to take part in the African Union team observing the April 8 cease-fire between the rebels and the government.

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