'Britain just wants our riches', says Sudanese leader

Sudan’s president accused Britain, the US and Europe of interfering over crisis-torn Darfur, saying they were interested only in his country’s “riches and resources”.

President Omar al-Bashir warned that his government did not want war, but was ready for it, during a rare show of public support last night for a paramilitary force accused of atrocities in the western Sudanese region.

“We will not seek war, but if imposed on us we are ready,” al-Bashir told a rally to mark the 18th anniversary of the Popular Defence Forces, a militia he created to fight southern rebels and that has since been unleashed on Darfur.

He accused western powers backing a 26,000-strong United Nations and African Union force due in Darfur in January of lying about their motives to end four years of bloodshed.

“Those Americans, those British, and those Europeans are not keen about the people of Darfur, or the people of southern Sudan or the Sudanese people,” he told the rally in the town of Medani, 200 miles south of the capital Khartoum.

“They are all liars and hypocrites who are only interested in the riches and resources of Sudan.”

His allusions to the government’s capacity to wage war came amid souring relations between Arab-dominated northern Sudan and the former rebels from the south of the country.

The north-south civil war ended in 2005, but southern Cabinet ministers walked out of the national government last month, accusing al-Bashir’s regime of breaking the peace agreement.

The president said his government would not seek to spark a new war with the southerners, but warned that those who wanted to bring war to the north “should bear the consequences”.

Like the ethnic Africans from the south, Darfur’s black tribes took arms against Khartoum in 2003 to protest at what they described as decades of discrimination.

The government is accused of retaliating by unleashing militias of Darfur Arab nomads that are blamed for the worst atrocities against civilians in a conflict that has killed more that 200,000 people and made 2,5 million refugees.

Many observers say the janjaweed and Khartoum’s Popular Defence Forces units are often one and the same. The government denies this, but the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued warrants against a janjaweed chief and a Cabinet minister on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Khartoum resisted a UN peacekeeping force for Darfur for months. Under a compromise deal reached earlier this year, the hybrid UN and AU force must be predominantly African.

Yesterday, al-Bashir repeated warnings that he would not accept some European nations to take part in the force.

He singled out Scandinavian countries, where some media had reproduced a caricature of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed last year.

“Anyone who spoke blasphemously about the Prophet will not set a foot on Sudanese soil,” he said.