Fighting is spreading in Sudan's Darfur region and may intensify in the short-run despite a landmark peace agreement between Khartoum and rebels in the south, a senior UN official said today.
Mr Jan Pronk, the special UN envoy for Sudan, told the UN Security Council arms were flooding into the region, violence was spreading beyond camps for the homeless, banditry was increasing and rebel groups were launching attacks in the area of oil facilities.
"We may move into a period of intense violence unless swift action is taken," Mr Pronk said. "I do not exclude the possibility that the signature of the (north-south) agreement will be followed in the short term by an intensification of violence in and around Darfur."
The Sudanese government, he said, may be tempted to think that the world would not put at risk the north-south agreement that ended two decades of fighting by taking action in Darfur. And Darfur rebel movements appear to believe that military gains are the way to be taken seriously.
The only bulwark against a wider war appears to be the African Union, which has promised more than 3,000 troops and monitors but has not been able to put more than a third of them in the field and needs outside help. The council meeting, scheduled for this morning, was delayed for more than five hours, because France insisted an English-language report on Darfur be translated into French first, diplomats said.
About 1.7 million people are homeless and some 70,000 are estimated to have died in Darfur. The crisis was sparked in February 2003 when pastoral rebel groups took up arms against the government in a struggle over power and scarce resources. Khartoum retaliated by arming nomad militia, accused of conducting a campaign of murder, rape and arson.