UN official urges action to halt humanitarian crisis in Darfur

A senior UN official on Monday called for immediate action to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur.

"Our entire humanitarian operation in Darfur - the only lifeline for more than three million people - is presently at risk," said UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who is also the UN's under-secretary-general.

"We need immediate action on the political front to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe with massive loss of life," he told the UN Security Council in a closed-door meeting.

Since a May peace agreement was reached by the Sudanese government and one of the region's major rebel groups, violence, sexual abuse and displacement of people have increased dramatically, Egeland told the council.

Egeland warned the council that if humanitarian operation were to collapse in the absence of safer conditions for aid workers, hundreds of thousands of people would die, resulting in "a man- made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale in Darfur."

"Insecurity is at its highest levels since 2004, (humanitarian) access at its lowest levels since that date and we may well be on the brink of a return to all-out war," Egeland added.

The United States and Britain circulated a draft resolution that would call for the deployment of 17,000 UN troops to Darfur to replace the 7,000-strong African Union mission which had so far failed to prevent a humanitarian crisis from worsening.

While the two countries said they hope the resolution will be adopted by the end of August, the United Nations said it cannot deploy unless Khartoum agrees.

Khartoum has repeatedly rejected the prospect of deploying UN troops to Darfur and instead offered to send 10,500 more government troops to Darfur to stop the violence.

Source: Xinhua