As World Talks, More Violence Racks Darfur

Amid attacks on civilians in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the Security Council and regional leaders remained stymied Friday by that country’s refusal to allow U.N. peacekeepers into the region to protect villagers caught in the conflict.

The U.S. and Denmark gathered senior officials from 20 “concerned countries,” the African Union and the United Nations to discuss possible next steps, such as sanctions, a no-fly zone over Darfur or a forcible intervention.

“Time is running out. The violence in Darfur is not subsiding, it is getting worse,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the officials at the emergency session.

The meeting was aimed at winning support from Arab countries, especially those that have been silent or have backed Sudan’s refusal to accept more than 20,000 peacekeepers by January. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir this week that he sided with Sudan.

A statement by the U.S. and Danish co-chairs said: “The killings, violence and atrocities must end. The intolerable suffering of the people of Darfur must stop.”

But the meeting broke up without agreement on how best to persuade Sudan’s government to halt attacks on the people in Darfur, or at least allow U.N. troops to protect them and aid groups to help them.

Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, made it clear that there was no support in the region for an armed intervention, even if it were under a U.N. mandate. He said any solution must come with the consent of Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum, and public threats would only increase Bashir’s intransigence.

That leaves the question of what should happen next.

Rice said Bashir’s government should recognize that the world is trying to help Sudan, not occupy it.

“The Sudanese government needs to understand that no one is trying to impinge on Sudanese sovereignty. That is not the issue here,” she said. “But there is a responsibility to protect the weakest and Sudan has not done that, and so there will have to be a U.N. force.”

As the diplomats debated this week, U.N. human rights monitors reported that Sudan’s army was bombing areas in northern Darfur, causing civilian casualties and driving hundreds of people out of their villages. The rights monitors also reported that sexual violence continued in southern Darfur, particularly near camps for displaced people near the town of Gereida, and that African Union forces were not able to stop it.

Bashir said this week that U.N. troops were not welcome under any circumstances, but he would allow more African Union troops in Darfur.

There are about 7,200 African Union troops there now, but they are too underfunded and ill-equipped to effectively protect people scattered throughout a barren region the size of France. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the three-year conflict between government-aligned militias and rebel groups, and about 2.5 million have been displaced.

A peace agreement between one of the rebel groups and the government is all but dead, say U.N. officials, and the government is massing its military in the region to put down other anti-government factions.

Sudan’s government has accepted a separate contingent of U.N. peacekeepers to stabilize southern Sudan, which is slowly rebuilding after two decades of civil war.

On Friday, the Security Council extended the peacekeeping troops’ presence there just until Oct. 8 in an attempt to keep pressure on Khartoum. The council may extend it after that, depending on Khartoum’s cooperation in Darfur.

The new October deadline “would give us more time, I think, to build up momentum and pressure on the government of Khartoum to accept the inevitability that there is going to be a U.N. peacekeeping force,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton.

The U.N. announced Friday that it would send 100 additional personnel to help the African Union force with communications and logistics. The Arab League promised new funding, though earlier pledges fell through and caused unpaid African Union forces to essentially stop working last spring.

Rice said that the international community was determined to stop the violence in Darfur, with incentives, or with sanctions. “Clearly, no one intends to appease anyone,” she said after the meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. “We intend to have the government of Sudan act.”

maggie.farley@latimes.com