SG/SM/9700, AFR/1101

Following is the statement of Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur issued today in New York:

Yesterday, 31 January, I transmitted to the President of the Security Council the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur. I have also released the text to the public.

The Commission has established that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed are responsible for crimes under

Suffering on a massive scale continues in Darfur, Oxfam warned today.

1.65 million people have been forced to flee their homes and are forced to live in camps or in makeshift shelters on the edge of towns, unable to return to their villages.

Each week thousands more people arrive in camps and villages across Darfur. There they join the hundreds of thousands already living in desperate conditions, many without access to clean water and sanitation, poor shelter and little food, in conditions ripe for malnutrition and disease.

Last week Oxfam began

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
ABUJA, 1 February (IRIN) - The conflict in Sudan's Darfur region took centre-stage at the twice yearly African Union summit. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who was re-elected AU chairman for a further year, said AU-sponsored peace talks between the Sudanese government and the two main rebel movements in Darfur would resume in the Nigerian capital Abuja in mid-February.

The two-day summit attracted 40 heads of state from the AU's 53 member countries and ended on Monday night, several

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Rebels from the Darfur region of western Sudan said on Tuesday a U.N. report was mistaken in failing to accuse the Sudan government and allied Arab militias of genocide in the Darfur conflict.

"If this report says there is no genocide in Darfur then we reject this report," Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Khalil Ibrahim told Reuters by telephone from his headquarters in the Eritrean capital Asmara.

"There are hundreds of mass graves that the commission did not go to," he said, adding the decision to

In further violence in the war-torn Darfur region, the UN mission in Sudan said today it had received reports from the African Union (AU) monitoring team that two AU teams have been shot at in different locations.

The first incident occurred yesterday in an area south of Nyala, South Darfur, where AU monitors were investigating an attack on a village. The second occurred near Shangil Tobai, where another team was investigating reports that aerial bombings had taken place last week. No casualties have been confirmed in the either incident.

Yesterday the UN Advance Mission in Sudan

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 1 February (IRIN) - Scores of people were reported killed and others wounded after police shot at protestors of the Beja ethnic group during two days of riots in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, Beja representatives said.

The head of the Beja Congress movement in Khartoum, Amina Dhirar, told reporters at a news conference on Sunday that at least 25 demonstrators were killed and about 100 others were wounded in Port Sudan, 684 km northeast of the capital, Khartoum.

By Callie Long, ACT International

Nyala, February 1, 2005 - It is one of those hypothetical questions that everyone dreads having to ever answer: If your house were burning down, what would you save? In south Darfur, this is a question that thousands of people caught up in the conflict in this part of Sudan have had to face over the last 18 months - sometimes more than once.

People living in a camp for displaced people in the Ta'asha area, where staff of the ACT/Caritas response to the emergency in the province were implementing projects, had been forced

SG/SM/9702
AFR/1102

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for Secretary-General Kofi Annan:

The Secretary-General shares the serious concern of the African Union about the recent shooting at two African Union monitors in South Darfur on 31 January. He strongly condemns this attack, which could jeopardize the fulfilment of the African Union mission in Darfur and which occurred at a time when the military observers were conducting investigations to verify allegations of aerial bombardments and other violations

ABUJA, Jan 31 (Reuters) - A keenly awaited United Nations investigation into human rights abuse in Sudan's Darfur region does not describe violence against villagers there as "genocide", said Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.

"We have a copy of that report and they didn't say there is a genocide," Ismail told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of an African Union summit in the Nigerian capital.

There has been no confirmation of the contents of the report from U.N. officials.

Tens of thousands of people have been