Ex-president Carter faces down Darfur guards
Former US President Jimmy Carter was involved in a public row with officials who tried to stop him meeting Darfur refugees today.
The 83-year-old walked into the volatile pro-Sudanese government town of Kabkabiya to meet people too frightened to leave their homes.
He got as far as a school where he met one tribal representative and was preparing to move on when Sudanese security services interrupted.
“You can’t go. It’s not on the program!” one local national security chief yelled at Mr Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures.
“We’re going to anyway!” he shouted back, telling security officers they did not have the authority to stop him.
As a crowd gathered around the former president, his US Secret Service security and African Union escort tried to ease tensions.
Mr Carter later agreed to a compromise under which tribal representatives would meet him at another location later.
The Darfur conflict began when ethnic Africans rebelled against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect.
Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed – a charge it denies. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven out of their homes in four years of violence.
The visit by Mr Carter and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, is largely a symbolic move by a host of respected figures to push all sides to make peace in Darfur.
While Archbishop Tutu led a group to the Otash refugee camp in south Darfur today, the UN mission in Sudan said it was too dangerous for Mr Carter to visit a refugee camp.
He instead flew to a World Food Program compound in Kabkabiya, where he was supposed to meet with local community members including some ethnic African refugees, many of whom were chased from their homes by the janjaweed.
But as the meeting was set to get under way, none of the non-government refugee representatives arrived, and Carter decided to walk out into the town to try to talk with them.
His delegation, known as “The Elders” is trying to use their influence at a crucial time – with peace talks due to start in Libya and deployment of a 26,000-strong African Union-UN peacekeeping force to begin later this month.
Tensions are running high after rebels overran an African Union peacekeeping base in northern Darfur, killing 10 in the deadliest attack on the beleaguered force since it arrived in the region three years ago.
