UN rights officials to brief Security Council on latest situation in Darfur, Sudan

The United Nations' top human rights official and its expert on genocide will brief the Security Council tomorrow on the findings of their weeklong mission to the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur, where more than 1.65 million people have been forced to leave their homes and armed militias are accused of killing thousands of others.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Juan Méndez will be joined by Mr. Annan at tomorrow's Council meeting, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said today.

Mr. Annan dispatched Mrs. Arbour and Mr. Méndez to Darfur to investigate the latest situation and recommend what should be done to protect the region's vast and rising population of displaced persons.

Before leaving Geneva, where she is based, Mrs. Arbour told reporters she will advocate that the external security and humanitarian presence in Darfur should be rapidly expanded.

Many of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in a climate of fear, she said, because of the possibility of further attacks from Janjaweed militias that have already been linked to the killings and rapes of villagers and the destruction of homes and cropland.

There are about 1.45 million IDPs in Darfur and another 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Chad because of the Janjaweed attacks and fighting between Sudanese Government forces and two local rebel groups.

Mr. Annan's Special Representative for Sudan Jan Pronk will arrive in New York tomorrow, but is not expected to brief the Council until next Tuesday on his latest 30-day report on what progress Khartoum has made towards restoring security in Darfur and disarming the Janjaweed.

Mr. Pronk is currently in Brussels holding talks with European Union (EU) officials on the Darfur crisis, with the talks focused on support for an expanded mission of African Union (AU) monitors and on how to improve humanitarian assistance.

A progress report on the work of the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS) - established under the Council's Resolution 1547 in June - is likely to be issued on Friday, Mr. Eckhard said.

In a press briefing today, UNAMIS said there have been reports of attacks by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), one of the Darfur rebel groups, on military and police camps in the region in the past two weeks.

In a separate incident on 23 September, a gathering of about 3,000 people in North Darfur was cleared by Sudanese police who loaded the participants into trucks and then drove them to different locations. UN agencies are discussing the issue with Sudanese officials, according to UNAMIS.