Violence in Darfur: where is the end?

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick plans to visit &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/367/12391_Sudan.html ' target=_blank>Darfur Friday as part of intensifying diplomatic efforts to halt starvation and armed conflict threatening millions of lives in Sudan's western region. Darfuri civic leaders who met the State Department's number two official in Khartoum Thursday described a dire situation in their home province. "All Darfur is a (prison) camp because there is insecurity, starvation," said Mahmoud Mustafa el-Mekki, a senior tribal official. Madibbo Adam Madibbo, foreign affairs secretary of the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/world/2000/11/24/1115.html ' target=_blank>Umma Party, Sudan's largest political party, said the authorities could rein in militias who are behind the atrocities and killing in Darfur "but are not willing." After flying from Khartoum, Zoellick was scheduled to tour Abu Shouk camp near the town of El Fasher after briefings by non-governmental organizations doing humanitarian work there, erports Reuters. According to VOA News, Sudanese officials have told Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick they are doing all they can to stop the bloodshed in the war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan. Mr. Zoellick arrived in Sudan to begin a two-day visit aimed at pressuring Khartoum to end the conflict in Darfur and to begin implementing an accord, which ended a separate war in the south. At their meeting in Khartoum, Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha told the second-ranking U.S. diplomat that the Sudanese government is working diligently to stop the violence in Darfur. Mr. Taha has given such assurances before about his government's effort to end the conflict in western Sudan, which has raged for more than two years and has killed an estimated 180,000 people. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Elizabeth Colton, says &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2001/07/25/10930.html ' target=_blank>Mr. Zoellick was clear in conveying the U.S. demand for the Sudanese government to live up to its past promises. NR

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