Sudan Denies Refugee Camps Siege

[David]

AP


Sudan denied a U.N. claim that Sudanese military and police forces were surrounding several refugee camps Tuesday in the war-torn region of Darfur and refusing access to humanitarian groups, but said angry Arab tribesmen had gathered in those areas.

Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said in Geneva that at least 160,000 refugees in western Darfur cannot be reached by road "because of insecurity." She said the U.N. food agency has relocated 88 aid workers, most of them employed by independent aid agencies, from three camps in the Nyala region: Golu, Zaleinge and Nertetie.

"It started at 3 a.m. without any warning," Berthiaume said. "Agencies have been denied access to these camps since this morning."

Asked whether army or police forces were surrounding camps, Sudan's Humanitarian Affairs minister, Ibrahim Hamid said: "There is no siege."

"It is not true that the government was telling organizations to pull out of the area, and the areas are not besieged," Hamid told The Associated Press in Khartoum.

"What happened is that angry Arab tribesmen gathered after the abduction of 18 of their men by the rebels. But the African Union has been alerted and they said they would bring those abducted out of the mountainous areas of Zaleinge," he said.

The rebels Hamid was referring to are non-Arab Africans who began an uprising nearly two years ago. The Sudanese government is accused of backing armed Arab tribesmen known as the Janjaweed in an attempt to put down the uprising. The Janjaweed are blamed for rapes, killings and the burning of villages, bringing on a humanitarian catastrophe in the Darfur region.

The government denies supporting the Janjaweed in any campaign of ethnic cleansing. The United Nations says more than 70,000 people have died in the crisis, most of them from disease and hunger, a figure the Sudanese government maintains is grossly exaggerated. More than 1.5 million people fled their homes.

Berthiaume said the World Food Program still has three employees in Zaleinge and Nertetie, but may evacuate them depending "on the evolution of the situation." Refugees, she said, were afraid of government retaliation for last week's abduction of 18 Sudanese of Arab origin.

The WFP is concerned government forces may start relocating people from the camps back to their villages, where there is less protection from the Janjaweed, she added.

Hamid said that on Thursday and Friday rebels near Zaleinge began stopping buses and lorries and telling people of Arab origin to dismount, then abducted 18 of them into the mountains. Most of those abducted were students, he said, and three managed to escape and get word to their tribes.

Angry Arab tribesmen informed the government, which in turn informed the African Union, Hamid said. He said the AU planned to contact the rebels to verify the information.

An African Union spokesman in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told the AP in Kenya that his organization had not received any information Sudanese army and police have surrounded the camps and denied access to humanitarian groups.

"I don't have that information from our military observers, so I can't comment on that," said Assane Ba.

The 53-member AU has about 80 military observers monitoring a shaky cease-fire in Darfur. It currently is beefing up its mission in Darfur, with Rwandan and Nigerian peacekeepers being flown in.

The United Nations and aid groups have called Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Aid workers and U.N. officials in Sudan have confirmed violence in the Zaleinge area, where tensions have risen as Arab tribes have demanded international agencies secure the hostages' release.

A deadline for the release of the Arab hostages expired Sunday.

The Sudanese government has accused the rebel Sudan Liberation Army of last week's kidnapping, while rebels claimed Janjaweed ordered 30 ethnic Africans from a bus on Sunday then shot them dead.

"Along with other international organizations, we have had to cancel missions to the field planned for this week," said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

The United Nations has suspended all field missions by international organizations because of the kidnapping and ensuing violence, Redmond confirmed.

Both sides are accused of routine violations of an April cease-fire.

In September, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the situation in Darfur amounted to genocide.