More than 100,000 people staged a state-organized protest against a UN Security Council resolution giving Sudan 30 days to stop Arab militia violence in the western region of Darfur or face economic and diplomatic penalties.
Protesters also warned on Wednesday that Sudan could become a battlefield like Afghanistan or Iraq if foreign military forces enter this African country to try to end the 17-month Darfur conflict, which has killed 30,000 people, forced a million from their homes and left an estimated 2.2 million in urgent need of food, medicine and other basics.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Targeting Sudan means you will fall into a third swamp, after Afghanistan and Iraq," said a senior member of the ruling party, Mohammed Ali Abdullah, in comments directed at US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"There are lions here in Sudan who would like to confront the Americans," he said.
Although no Western government has threatened to invade Sudan, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has mentioned the possibility of such intervention since it became clear the Khartoum government was failing to curb the violence in Darfur. France has deployed a small force along Chad's border with Darfur to stop Arab militia from crossing over.
In Ethiopia on Wednesday, the African Union said it would send a peacekeeping mission of 1,600 to 1,800 troops to Darfur to speed up humanitarian aid and counter the repeated violations of an April 8 cease-fire deal between the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.
It was unclear when the force would be sent.
In New York, Annan said he was sending a team led by the UN military adviser to Ethiopia on Wednesday to work with the African Union on the restructuring of the force and its needs.
The expanded force "would protect the monitors, it will protect the regroupment camps for the rebels and the groups that are going to be disarmed, and its mere presence on the ground would also have a positive impact and dissuade further attacks," Annan said.
He also said Wednesday's Khartoum demonstrations "are not unexpected," saying governments sometimes use demonstrations to "pressure" the world body and "send a message to the international community."
When Annan was asked by a reporter whether the Sudanese Government is ready to cooperate with the international community, he replied, "I think the Sudanese government has got the message. I have a representative on the ground. You also have to understand that it is a complex society, and some of the statements you hear are not necessarily for you or me, but for people on the ground."
On Friday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution giving Sudan 30 days to curb pro-government Arab militias blamed for the violence in Darfur or face penalties.
Annan has said he expects Sudan to cooperate with the resolution, but warned of consequences if Khartoum does not.
In a July 29 statement, Annan accused Sudanese "government security personnel" of threatening displaced people and expressed grave concern about "reports of continuing intimidation, threats and attacks against refugees."
Wednesday's protesters, many chanting "No to America and its followers," delivered a memorandum to the UN envoy's office in Khartoum demanding Annan retract his "misleading" remarks about the Darfur situation or resign.
"You, as the secretary general of the United Nations, hold all the responsibility for escalating the crisis in Darfur as your remarks formed the basis of the misleading, antagonistic Western propaganda against Sudan," the memorandum said in Arabic.
The UN and international aid organizations accuse the pro-government Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, of waging a brutal campaign to drive Sudanese citizens of African origin out of Darfur, which borders Chad.
The ruling National Congress party's secretary-general, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, led the demonstrators from the UN offices to the presidential palace in Khartoum's Martyrs' Square, where he accused foreign nations of threatening Sudan in a bid to gain access to the country's natural resources.
"They will return empty-handed ... [because] we used to be Mujahedeen and we are still Mujahedeen," Omar told the protesters, who included people holding banners threatening holy war and students wearing military uniforms.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS