Darfur rebels waiting for UN
2007-11-06 23:04
Khartoum - A Darfur rebel group said on Tuesday it was waiting for a United Nations mission to arrive so it could free five oil workers kidnapped last month in the neighbouring Kordofan region.
"We are still waiting for the people from the UN," said Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr, from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
Ashr had said on Sunday that the movement's leader Khalil Ibrahim had ordered the five to be released at the request of the Egyptian government.
The rebels had previously made the hostages' release conditional on their employers' withdrawal from working with the Khartoum government in developing Sudan's oil resources.
The JEM said on October 25 it had kidnapped the oil workers, three Sudanese, an Iraqi and an Egyptian.
The five were abducted on October 23, it said, naming the two foreigners as engineers Ahmed Heyman Mohammed from Iraq and Joseph William Samuel of Egypt.
The rebel group had warned it would attack foreign oil companies and target Chinese firms in particular.
"China is the main supplier of weapons to Sudan, it has always supported the government in the UN Security Council and it hasn't provided even a single sack of grain to the people of Darfur," Ashr said.
The five workers were seized in an attack on a facility at Defra run by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, a consortium involving China's CNPC, India's ONGC, Malaysia's Petronas and state-owned Sudapet.
The oilfield produces more than half of the country's output of about 500 000 barrels of oil per day, most of which is exported to China.
Beijing has often been accused of failing to exert pressure on Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, where conflict has left at least 200 000 dead and displaced more than two million, according to UN figures.