SUDAN: Sudan said yesterday that United Nations reports of helicopter gunship attacks in its troubled Darfur region were baseless and were misleading public opinion.
The UN said in a statement on Tuesday that Arab militia were still attacking some of the more than one million people displaced by fighting in Darfur, and that Sudan had carried out fresh helicopter attacks in south Darfur.
But the UN secretary-general's special representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, said yesterday the UN reports were still being checked to see if the attacks in fact took place.
Sudanese State Minister of Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab dismissed the reports as "baseless and untrue".
"We believe that this statement is very vague and it's sourceless and believe it is inconsistent with the judgment made by the special representative, Jan Pronk," he said.
Pronk said the government was making serious efforts to meet promises made to the UN, which include disarming the marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed, who stand accused of looting and burning African farming villages in Darfur.
"So far in all my talks I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to keep the promises made," he told reporters in Khartoum.
Asked about the reported helicopter attacks, he said: "Attacks, if reported, have to be checked. Whether they took place, where they took place, we are checking that at the moment."
Sudan is under intense international pressure to rein in the Janjaweed and has less than three weeks to show the UN Security Council it is making progress towards security in Darfur. If if fails, Khartoum could face unspecified sanctions.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the UN statements were contradictory and misleading public opinion.
Meanwhile, millions of locusts may be heading for Sudan's Darfur region, pest control experts said.
If locust swarms do hit, insecurity in the remote western region would prevent an effective control operation, they said.
"Swarms could get into Sudan any day, but we of course don't know when," said Clive Elliott, senior officer in charge of the locust group at the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Locusts may have already swept into the country. "We have indications that swarms of locust devastating neighbouring Chad may have also affected Sudan's western region of Darfur," Peter Odiyo, director of the Addis Ababa-based Desert Locust Control, said.