Sudan lashes out at NGOs

2004-05-17 12:49

Khartoum - Sudan is to monitor unnamed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) accused of having supported rebels in west Sudan's Darfur region, where a bitter conflict is raging amid strong criticism of the Sudan government's actions.

Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Hussein and Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid told a press conference here Sunday that some of the hundreds of NGOs operating in Darfur region "used humanitarian operations as a cover for carrying out a hidden agenda and proved to have supported the rebellion in the past period".

For this reason, "the authorities will be careful in permitting such NGOs to operate in Darfur," Hamid said.

The press conference was called to announce the dispatch of a new police unit to Darfur, where United Nations agencies and rights groups say there is a humanitarian catastrophe.

Hussein said the force, whose strength he refrained from disclosing, had a high level of training and was equipped with modern weapons and 130 vehicles.

"The police force is going there to enforce law and order and to protect the people of Darfur and their property," he said.

Hussein also repeated the Sudanese government line that the problem in Darfur "is not an ethnic problem but an economic one connected with pasture and farming and was politicised by the rebels", who, he said, managed to rally local inhabitants "for their own purposes".

He also claimed weapons had been smuggled across the border with Chad, which the interior minister said is straddled by 18 different tribes.

Firmly denying the presence of any Chadian opposition elements on Sudanese territory, Hussein said during a visit he recently paid to Ndjamena and met with President Idriss Deby, the two sides agreed on co-ordination in the security field.

Khartoum has been accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur by supporting the Arab Janjaweed militia in its atrocities against the local population - a charge it vigorously denies.

More than a million people have been driven from their homes and at least 10 000 killed in Darfur since the outbreak of fighting early last year.

More than 120 000 refugees have fled into Chad, the UN refugee agency says.

- AFP