Sudan has pledged to set up safe areas for uprooted Darfur villagers, and said it will work to disarm marauding militia and stop misconduct by its own troops in civilian areas, according to an agreement completed on Friday.
The Plan of Action for Darfur would also curb military movements by pro-government militia as well as rebels opposing them around the safe areas, to be set up in camps for displaced people and near towns so people can search for food and water and tend their animals.
PHOTO: AP
The first draft of the agreement was reached on Wednesday between Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and UN envoy Jan Pronk. It outlines steps the government must take within a month to improve security in its western Darfur region, site of what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
It is to be signed by both officials tomorrow; it was sent to the 15 UN Security Council members on Friday by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The Security Council threatened to consider sanctions in 30 days if Khartoum did not curb Arab militia known as Janjaweed who are accused of killing and raping civilians and uprooting thousands of African farmers, leaving 2 million people in need of food, medicine and shelter.
Pronk told reporters in Khartoum on Thursday he hoped that if Sudan followed the agreement, there would be no need for the council to consider sanctions.
Annan, in a statement, welcomed the plan and said he looked forward "to swift and sustained action" by Khartoum to implement its commitments. He must report to the council within a month about whether Sudan has complied with the resolution.
Specifically, Sudan would identify areas of Darfur that can be made "secure and safe within 30 days," including camps for uprooted villagers. It would then use police to provide secure routes to towns and villages and allow people access to water and food sources and the freedom to tend animals.
Sudan promised that "all offensive military operations" by its army, which has backed the Janjaweed, would "cease immed-iately" in the proposed safe areas. This would include government actions against African rebel groups, which became active in early 2003 alleging violence and neglect by the regime.
Khartoum then turned to Janjaweed militias, drawn from the nomadic Arab population, to suppress the rebels.
The Sudanese army would be "redeployed in such a way that they are not in direct contact with the camps and civilians" in an effort to "demonstrate political will and help build confidence amongst the local population," the agreement said.
The rebels and the militia are to lay down their weapons, which would be collected later as part of a mutually agreed disarmament program, the agreement said.
As for the Janjaweed, who are referred to in the agreement as "armed militia," the government would "identify and declare those militias over which it has influence and instruct them to cease their activities."
The Sudanese government said it would invite the African Union cease-fire commission to monitor and report on the commitments. And it made an "un-equivocal declaration" to restart peace talks with the rebels as soon as possible.
The US estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed in the 17-month conflict. UN agencies predict more deaths by December, when the rainy season floods farms.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of
RSS