Annan Calls for Urgent Action on Darfur

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, today urged an emergency session of the UN human rights council to take immediate action over atrocities in Darfur, Sudan.

Mr Annan called on the council, a new human rights watchdog set up last June, to send an independent team to investigate reports of an increase in violence, including mass rapes of girls as young as eight.

"It is urgent that we take action to prevent further violations, including by bringing to account those responsible for the numerous crimes that have already been committed," Mr Annan said in a recorded address to open the 47-member emergency session.

As the meeting began in Geneva, the UN envoy expelled from Sudan after publicly criticising the Sudanese army, said he feared the situation would get worse because the UN security council had failed to support him.

Sudan's government declared Jan Pronk persona non grata in October after he wrote on his blog that the Sudanese army had twice been defeated by rebels in Darfur and was mutinous.

The Dutch-born diplomat went back to Sudan last week to collect his belongings and hand the mission over to his deputy, Taye-Brook Zerihoun.

"I think that I didn't get sufficient support from the side of the security council," Mr Pronk told the Netherlands' state broadcaster NOS, in his first interview since returning from Sudan.

"My worry is that the (Sudanese) government thinks now that it can get away with anything," he said.

Mr Pronk has persistently accused the Sudanese government of neglect over the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur province, where an estimated 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since 2003, when rebels rose up against the government.

"If they (the Sudanese government) have gotten away with decapitating a (UN) mission without consequences, they'll go further," he said.

Mr Pronk - who is the first high-ranking UN official in years to have been expelled from a diplomatic mission - had repeatedly denounced the Sudanese government for continuing to arm militias known as the Janjaweed. Since his expulsion, Janjaweed have stepped up attacks on villages in Darfur, killing dozens of people.

The UN yesterday said gunmen on horseback attacked a truck carrying medicine and aid, and killed around 30 civilians, some of whom were burned alive. The attack took place near Sirba, 30 miles north of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state and close to the Sudan-Chad border.

Khartoum has so far rejected proposals for a UN peacekeeping deployment in western Darfur, an area the size of France. Civilians have to rely on an ill-equipped and underfunded African Union force of 7,000.

Darfur represents a major test for the fledgling human rights council, which replaced the widely discredited human rights commission. So far the council has held three special sessions on the Middle East to condemn alleged Israeli violations in Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

But it has only passed one mildly worded African-sponsored resolution on Darfur, calling for an end to rights violations.

Human rights groups have criticised the attitude of African and Arab countries on the council. The US group Human Rights Watch said some council members, such as Algeria, seemed more concerned with protecting the government of Sudan than addressing its responsibility for war crimes in Darfur.

"A 'see no evil, speak no evil' approach doesn't work when it comes to human rights," said Peggy Hicks, the global advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "If the human rights council won't speak out on Darfur, when will it be willing to act?"

Analysts say all sides of the conflict - rebels, government forces and Arab militias allied to the government - are engaged in fresh fighting. Some aid workers say the humanitarian situation has not been as bad since 2003.

The UN's top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, warned last week that the Darfur conflict had spread into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic and was in "freefall", with the prospect of 6 million people lacking food or protection.