Sudan expects to meet deadline to rein in militias

SUDAN yesterday said it expected to meet a UN deadline in three weeks’ time for it to improve security and human rights in its troubled Darfur region.

The United Nations has threatened to consider sanctions unless Sudan proves it is serious about disarming Arab militias in Darfur, where fighting has displaced around a million people.

"We have a shortage of time but we think we can do it," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Cairo.

First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha had said on Sunday he did not think the UN timeframe was practical due to "logistical problems".

Arab militia known as Janjaweed have been looting, burning and killing in Darfur's farming villages.

Rebels accuse the government of arming the Janjaweed to carry out ethnic cleansing. The government denies this and says the Janjaweed are outlaws.

While the US Congress has called the attacks genocide, a European Union fact-finding mission yesterday rejected the term but still criticized the Sudanese government.

"We are not in the situation of genocide," Pieter Feith, an adviser to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, told a news briefing after returning from Sudan.

"But it is clear there is widespread, silent and slow killing going on, and village burning of a fairly large scale... There are considerable doubts as to the willingness of Sudan's government to assume its duty to protect its civilian population against attacks."

He said the EU and other international players nevertheless appeared to have no choice but to cooperate with Khartoum, as none of them were ready to mount any significant military operation of their own.

Sudan pledged in talks with the UN last week to set up safe areas for villagers, work to disarm the Janjaweed and stop offensive actions in civilian areas, all within a month.

Mr Ismail rejected international estimates that 50,000 people have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur, where two rebel groups took up arms against the government in early 2003.

He said government estimates did not exceed 5,000 dead, including 486 police. He did not say whether violence or hunger and disease were to blame.