Sudan: More than 180,000 people have died from hunger and disease during the last 18 months of the Darfur conflict, the United Nations said yesterday as negotiations continued at its New York headquarters to break the deadlock on a new Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.
Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, said that an average 10,000 Sudanese civilians were dying each month, much higher than earlier estimates. They were victims mainly of starvation or of disease in refugee camps after being driven from their villages by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed Janjaweed militiamen. The estimates exclude those killed in the fighting.
Khartoum accused the UN of producing the figures as a ploy to get the Security Council to take action against Sudan and demanded evidence to back up the numbers.
Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said: "Jan Egeland was here. I met him [and] he never mentioned this number."
Mr Egeland said last week that an estimate of 70,000 was too low, but he did not indicate then what he regarded as a more realistic figure.
Almost a year after the UN described Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis there is still no sign that the scorched-earth campaign against black African villages has ended.
Hundreds of new refugees are flooding into overcrowded camps such as the giant settlement at Kalma in south Darfur, which housed fewer than 10,000 people this time last year, but now houses 100,000.
Sally Austin, assistant country director for the aid agency Care, said: "When I was there last, three weeks ago, we were seeing between 200 and 250 people arriving per day in two sectors [of the camp] where we work.
"The new refugees are queueing just to be able to get plastic sheeting to build temporary shelters. They are having to queue to get on food distribution lists, not just for food.
"We are also seeing people building more permanent structures out of mud, which I think is a sign that they realise they are going to be there another nine months."
Nearly two million black Africans have been driven from their homes in Darfur since the war began, and a further 200,000 have crossed into Chad. Two years of conflict have transformed Darfur into a landscape of refugee camps, swathes of ghostly, deserted villages and roving armed bands.
The US, which describes the war as genocide, is pushing for measures which will target individuals accused of major crimes, mainly in the Sudanese military, government and Janjaweed, but also in rebel groups.
The Security Council failed to reach agreement on a new resolution last week. The US blamed Russia and China for blocking a proposal to introduce limited sanctions. Others on the council blamed the US because of its objection to referring the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The US, which opposes the ICC, has suggested that the perpetrators face a special tribunal in Africa.
Britain is hoping that the Security Council can reach agreement by the end of this week. Discussions were taking place at the UN headquarters in New York yesterday.
Rick Grenell, spokesman for the US mission to the UN, this week described as preposterous a report last week that the US might allow reference to the ICC to go through.
A British source said yesterday that such a compromise was a possibility, although hopes were beginning to diminish. The US would need a cast-iron guarantee that its immunity from the ICC would not be affected, the source said.
China, which imports oil from Sudan and has up to 5,000 expatriates working there, opposes an oil embargo but is almost ready for a travel ban and an assets freeze on the main perpetrators. - (Guardian Service)
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