SUDAN: Sudan has started disarming Arab militias accused of sowing death and terror in Darfur and is confident the process will proceed smoothly, Foreign Minster Mustafa Osman Ismail said yesterday.
"It is under way," Mr Ismail said, following his government's pledge on Saturday to disarm the Janjaweed fighters responsible for uprooting more than one million people and creating what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
But rebels said the operation was a cover for preparations for a new wave of ethnic cleansing. They said a large government force was being mobilised in the regional capital.
Mr Ismail said a joint commission agreed during last week's visit to the region by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would verify the disarmament of the militia.
The Darfur crisis has taken centre stage ahead of this week's summit of the African Union in Addis Ababa, where the top AU official warned that Sudan faced a worsening humanitarian crisis unless the militias were stopped.
Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab, Sudan's state minister for foreign affairs, said police and army units were conducting the disarmament.
"We have collected weapons by force," Mr Wahab said. "The process of general and complete disarmament is under way under effective government control."
Sudan's promise has been greeted with scepticism by some human rights groups, which have joined US officials in accusing the militia of carrying out ethnic cleansing campaign against black Africans.
Underlining that scepticism, the rebel Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) said it feared Khartoum planned a new offensive from Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur state.
"The movement knows that under the cover of what is being termed 'the disarmament of the Janjaweed', the government is preparing a new ethnic cleansing push after the mobilisation of a large force from Nyala," the SLM said in a statement.
The SLM is one of two main rebel groups in the remote region, where Arab nomadic tribes have traditionally vied with African farming communities for scare resources.
The rebels accuse the government of neglecting the poor region and arming the Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages.
Some 10,000 to 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Darfur, and the UN has said two million people have been caught up in the fighting. About 200,000 refugees have fled to neighbouring Chad.
The African Union said all sides had agreed to meet in Addis Ababa on July 15th.
The two main Darfur rebel groups said they would only take part in talks once the Janjaweed had been disarmed.