Opposition leaders arrested in Khartoum

The Sudanese government arrested 14 members of the Islamist opposition Popular Congress Party of former prime minister Hassan El Turabi on Wednesday as security was tightened around the capital, Khartoum. The Interior Ministry, in a statement broadcast on Radio Omdurman, accused those arrested of attempting to sabotage the peace. There was extra police, military and security personnel on Khartoum streets, where they set up roadblocks. The government last year accused Turabi of sedition and claimed that his party was supporting the rebel Justice and Equality Movement in the western region of Darfur. The movement claims to be fighting to end the marginalisation of the area. Turabi, whose party was banned in March, has been under house arrest. Meanwhile, NGOs have urged France, Italy and Japan to improve their response to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, where there are about 1.2 million internally displaced persons, and eastern Chad, which hosts about 200,000 refugees from Darfur. The three were among governments that had contributed least towards alleviating the suffering of people affected by the Darfur conflict, the NGOs said in a joint letter on Wednesday. The organisations - the International Save the Children Alliance, CARE International, Oxfam International, and Caritas Internationalis - called on the three governments to "respond urgently to the crisis in Sudan and Chad by sharply increasing aid to the region". "These are some of the richest countries in the world and they have been among the poorest donors," Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam GB, said. "While humanitarian agencies struggle to cope with the overwhelming needs of the millions affected in this region, our difficulties are made worse by the lack of urgency of some rich nations in their response to the problem. "By the end of August the United Nations reported that it had only received just over half of the money it needs to help those who have fled the violence in Darfur," she said. According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, unmet requirements for the UN response to the Darfur crisis totalled $255 million as at 27 August. This was equivalent to 52 percent of the required amount. Some $73 million in outstanding pledges was yet to be received while no pledges had been received for another $182 million. In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Sudan operation, Jean-Marie Fakhouri, said that his organisation was not receiving sufficient money for Darfur. "The problem is that while there is a lot of political attention to the situation in Darfur, as there should be, the UN system has not really received adequate funding to actually respond to the emergency," Fakhouri told reporters. He said Sudanese refugees in Chad were unlikely to return to their villages in Darfur any time soon because of continuing insecurity. Fakhouri added that some refugees had gone back home only to find themselves fleeing again from the violence that had driven them from their villages in the first place. "Until such a time when security has been reestablished, we will not see any returns," he said.