Bush condemns "atrocities" in Darfur

US President George Bush on Wednesday urged the Sudanese government to "immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population" in Darfur, western Sudan, and to provide humanitarian aid agencies with unrestricted access to vulnerable people. "I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President [Umar al-] Bashir of Sudan," a statement issued by the US Department of State quoted Bush as saying. According to Bush, new fighting in Darfur had "opened a new chapter of tragedy in Sudan's troubled history". He said: "For more than two and a half years, the US has been working closely with the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) to bring peace to Sudan. This civil war is one of the worst humanitarian tragedies of our time, responsible for the deaths of two million people over two decades." Warning that the US would "move toward normal relations with the government only when there is a just and comprehensive peace agreement [with] the SPLM", Bush called for "unrestricted access for humanitarian relief throughout Sudan, including Darfur". The Sudanese government, he added, must "not remain complicit in the brutalisation of Darfur". Meanwhile the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday that during the past week alone nearly 20,000 more people had been rendered internally displaced in the Darfur region as a result of "a campaign of systematic torture and rape by militia groups, which a senior UN official recently linked to ethnic cleansing". "Truckloads of IDPs [internally displaced persons] from the Dinka ethnic community are also entering Nyala [the capital of Southern Darfur State] itself on a daily basis," OCHA said. "In the town of Kas [about 90 km northwest of Nyala], 15,000 people have arrived in the last week." OCHA said new arrivals at Kalma camp had reported that Janjawid militias committed "major atrocities" in the Shetaya and Kailiek areas of Darfur, killing and torturing up to 200 men, and systematically raping women. IDPs fleeing Kailiek said they had been forced to pay the militias for permission to leave the area. A separate group of thousands of IDPs, who fled a Janjawid attack on Abu Ajurah on 4 April, said the militia had attacked two of their four convoys, first looting the goods and then raping some of the women. In Geneva, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern about rights abuses in Darfur. "Such reports leave me with a deep sense of foreboding," he said in an address marking the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. "Whatever terms it uses to describe the situation, the international community cannot stand idle." See also: SUDAN: IDPs from southern Sudan caught up in Darfur violence