The top UN envoy in Sudan said he was horrified by fresh attacks in Darfur and urged both sides yesterday to stop fighting this month and conclude a peace agreement by the end of the year. "Stop the fighting in February. Talk 10 months ... but you should not give yourselves 10 years," envoy Jan Pronk said, referring a separate deal to end more than 20 years of civil war in southern Sudan signed last month after a decade of talks.He told reporters that last week he visited the Labado area in the east of South Darfur state, which saw fierce fighting between the government and rebels in December, followed by what Pronk called a "systematic pattern" of attacks by militias on civilian villages in which many people died. "I was horrified by what I saw in Labado. All huts had been demolished and burnt down... All water wells have been destroyed," he said. Militias had destroyed dozens of villages around the town in a similar manner, he added.
He said the African Union (AU) summit to be held in Khartoum in January 2006 should be an incentive to achieve peace before receiving the presidents from more than 50 nations to Sudan. Pronk was speaking two days after an independent commission of inquiry, in a report to the United Nations, stopped short of the US assessment that there has been genocide in Darfur. But it said government and military officials and allied Arab militia leaders were responsible for widespread abuses which may constitute crimes against humanity.
| Oh, innat terrible? He's "horrified." Not to the point where he calls for real armies to step in and depose a corrupt dictatorship that commits what may constitute "crimes against humanity," though not genocide, of course. Instead, he calls on both sides to "stop the killing" and be nice. I'm ready to scrape the UN from the national shoe every time I read something like this. |