UN experts urge wider arms embargo on Sudan, Chad

UN experts urge wider arms embargo on Sudan, Chad
Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:29pm EST Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page[-] Text [+]
By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - U.N. experts have recommended that an arms embargo on Darfur be extended to all of Sudan as well as neighboring Chad to combat "flagrant violations" of the ban by Khartoum and Darfur rebel groups.

In a report for the Security Council, released on Tuesday, a panel of four experts said both sides in Darfur were bent on a military solution to the five-year conflict in the west Sudanese region and a peacekeeping force had so far been ineffectual.

The panel was set up three years ago to monitor implementation of sanctions imposed by the council, which also include financial and travel bans, but only the 15-nation council can extend the scope of the measures.

The Darfur conflict began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect. U.N. officials say up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. Sudan says 10,000 have died.

The hard-hitting experts' report, covering the year up to September 2008, noted "continued flagrant violations of the arms embargo by all parties in Darfur," allowing continued attacks by both sides inside and outside the region.

"The actions of all sides make it clear that a military solution to the conflict has been chosen over any substantive engagement in peace talks," it said.

"Arms and related military materiel delivered to Chad and the Sudan outside of the provisions of the embargo and the territory concerned by it are diverted into Darfur and fuel the conflict."

The panel called on the council to look again at options for widening the embargo to cover all of Sudan, Chad and the northern parts of the Central African Republic.

Monitoring it should be entrusted to the U.N./African Union peacekeeping force, known as UNAMID, that is now slowly deploying in Darfur, it added.

REGULAR ATTACKS

The Security Council has shown no inclination so far to extend the sanctions and such a move could be opposed by veto-holding China and Russia, both of which believe Western states are over-using sanctions.

The experts' report accused Khartoum and allied militias of launching attacks in Darfur with "purposeful regularity," while rebels had engaged in banditry, criminality, extortion, attacks on the U.N. and aid groups, and violations of human rights.

Since the arms embargo was first imposed in 2004, the situation in Darfur had followed "a seemingly inexorable descent into chaos," it said, with more than 20 groups now claiming to represent the Darfuri people.

Emphasizing the wider regional nature of the conflict, the report said it had become part of a proxy war between Sudan and Chad, with both countries backing rebel groups that had attacked each other's capitals over the past year.

A lengthy analysis of weapons found in Darfur failed to trace the origin of all of them but said some light arms and ammunition had been part of legal deliveries by various countries to Chad and Libya. Others had been taken from Sudanese government stocks.

The report gave a bleak assessment of UNAMID, which is supposed to reach 26,000 troops and police but is at less than half that level amid shortages of equipment and persistent disputes with the Sudanese government.

The force "has not produced the security dividends expected" and had so far proven incapable of defending itself, let alone Darfur civilians, it said. (Editing by Chris Wilson)