South African President Thabo Mbeki should use the opportunity of the visit by Sudan’s Vice-President Salva Kiir Mayardit to ”impress upon” the Khartoum government that a strong international peacekeeping force must be allowed to be deployed there as soon as possible, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).
DA chief whip and foreign affairs spokesperson Douglas Gibson said the Khartoum government should not be allowed to shroud the conflict in Darfur ”in smoke and mirrors”.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had on Monday denied estimates by top United Nations officials, experts and humanitarian officials that as many as 200 000 people have died due to the combined effects of conflict and famine in Darfur since the start of the conflict in 2003, Gibson noted.
Bashir claimed that only 9 000 have died, a downscaling of his estimate of 10 000 in September.
He also claimed that aid officials were providing false information in order to prolong their stay in the region. Bashir’s statement should be taken for what it is — ”a desperate attempt to hide the true extent of a humanitarian crisis for which Khartoum is largely responsible”, said Gibson.
”Of even greater concern is the fact that Bashir denied that he had ever agreed that a strong hybrid peacekeeping force could be deployed in Darfur by December. Two weeks ago, the United Nations announced that Sudan had agreed to allow a 20 000-strong joint African Union-UN force into the region, but Bashir now [he] appears to have gone back on this agreement.
”At the moment a very small and under resourced AU force is struggling to patrol Darfur effectively and their already extended mandate expires in December.
”President Mbeki, along with everybody else, now appears to have been outflanked by Bashir, who has used these time-wasting tactics time and again and has repeatedly been allowed to dictate to the world on the Darfur crisis.
”The longer the ineffective AU force is left unaided in Darfur, the more freedom Khartoum has to do what it likes there. The crisis in Darfur is now spilling over the border into Chad and could be the source of a major regional conflict in months to come.
”It is imperative that President Mbeki and all others in a position to lobby Khartoum do so in order to prevent another Rwanda-like situation in the Darfur region.” — I-Net Bridge