Crack down on arms deliveries, UN experts urge

A panel of United Nations experts has urged Sudan's neighbours to crack down on unofficial shipments of arms into the war-torn east African country. The group also recommended that the UN Security Council extend and strengthen its embargo and consider naming individuals against whom sanctions should be imposed. "It is clear that arms, especially small arms and ammunition, continue to enter [the western Sudanese region of] Darfur from a number of countries and from other regions of the Sudan," said the report, which was quoted in UN News on Wednesday. The panel said the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) "have continued to receive arms, ammunition and/or equipment from Chad, Eritrea, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, non-governmental groups and other unknown sources," even after the Security Council imposed an arms embargo on all nongovernmental groups in 2004. The opposition groups received financial, political and other material support from neighbouring countries, the experts said. They were unable to determine whether the support from the three countries was official or "the independent actions of Government officials". "The panel judges that the government of Eritrea has provided, and probably continues to provide, arms, logistical support, military training and political support to both JEM and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). Training of JEM and SLA has reportedly occurred at a number of camps in Eritrea on the Eritrea-Sudan border," the report said. The governments and people named in the report were not immediately available for comment. The panel also said government troops were being shuffled from one part of the country to another. "Troops with their weapons being withdrawn from southern Sudan in fulfilment of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement are being transferred to Darfur," it said. The experts added that the African Union (AU) had reported suspicious, unannounced aircraft landings and departures at El-Fasher and Nyala airports at night, when they are officially closed and inaccessible to AU monitors, and at the airstrip of Tine as well.