As a UN deadline for action nears, the Sudanese government has not reined in Arab militias accused of killing villagers in the Darfur region, diplomats said a UN official told the Security Council.
Assistant Secretary-General Tuliameni Kalomoh told council members at a closed-door meeting Tuesday that the UN continues to receive reports of attacks by the militiamen as well as of looting and harassment by men in uniform.
But Kalomoh told the council that humanitarian aid access has improved and there was cooperation in identifying safe havens for the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees, said diplomats who were at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to council diplomats, Kalomoh also said that the Sudanese military was still blocking humanitarian flights and Sudanese authorities were exerting excessive pressure to get those who fled to return to their villages.
Kalomoh's briefing took place ahead of the Aug. 30 deadline the council set in a resolution adopted a month ago calling for the government to take action to improve security and humanitarian access.
UN officials say Darfur has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis since African rebels rose against the government in February 2003 to protest its pro-Arab bias. The government has been accused of trying to crush the revolt by backing a scorched-earth policy it denies, although last week it acknowledged it has "control" over some militia.
Khartoum has promised to give the United Nations a list of militants suspected of involvement in the bloodshed, but Kalomoh told the council it has not yet received any names, the diplomats said.
The resolution threatened punitive economic and diplomatic mea-sures if Khartoum didn't move quickly. But Britain's Foreign Office said on Friday that a majority of Security Council members oppose immediate heavy sanctions if Sudan fails to quell the violence, which has killed up to 30,000 and forced more than 1 million to flee their homes.
A statement by the council af-ter Tuesday's meeting made no mention of any punitive measures. Instead, the council voiced "strong support" to the African Union's efforts to tackle the crisis and urged Sudan and rebel leaders meeting in Nigeria to reach a political settlement and end the violence.
The African Union already has 80 observers in Darfur, protected by 150 Rwandan troops, to monitor a rarely observed cease-fire between black African rebels and government-backed Arab militias. But an AU plan to send nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to monitor the region, which is the size of France and has 147 known refugee camps, was rejected on Monday by Sudan.
US deputy ambassador Stuart Holliday said Washington hasn't ruled out sanctions, but he focused on proposals to beef up the African monitoring and protection force.
"People are still dying and they're still scared in Darfur, and I think the important thing is to address the protection and security issues that remain," he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to send a written report to the council by Aug. 30 on Sudan's implementation of the Darfur Plan of Action, which spelled out specific steps Sudan needed to take. His special representative to Sudan, Jan Pronk, is expected to brief the council on Sept. 2.
Russian UN Ambassador Andrey Denisov, the current council president, said members were waiting for Pronk's report before making a determination.
Asked for Russia's assessment of Khartoum's progress, he said "still there is a long way to go to implement the resolution ... and to prevent humanitarian suffering."
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS