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| Global update | Rebel groups stall Sudan peace talks on Darfur security The U.N. calls the conflict, which has claimed 70, 000 lives since March, a 'humanitarian crisis' BY DANIEL BALINT-KURTI THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ABUJA, Nigeria — A new round of peace talks on the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region stalled Tliesday when rebels refused face-to-face talks with the government until African Union mediators meet separately with both sides to draft an agenda. The latest African Union-bro kered talks between the govern ment and two main rebel groups began Monday with each side ac cusing the other of violating a cease-fire repeatedly over the last several days. The second day of talks in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja ended early and would resume Wednesday, delegates said. Sudan Liberation Army spokesman Mahgoub Hussain said his rebel group would only hold face-to-face discussions with the government if they could agree on an agenda first and he insisted the African Union meet separately with each side. “It’s the same problem ... we need to know the agenda,” Hus sain said. On Monday, planned talks on key security issues, including disar mament of rebels and pro-govern ment militias, stalled for similar reasons. Rebels are demanding an agree ment on security issues before sign ing an already drafted humanitari an accord aimed at giving aid workers broader access to hun dreds of thousands of refugees. A key sticking point in reaching a deal on security is a government demand that the insurgents disarm. The two rebel groups at the talks, the Sudan Liberation Army and the smaller Justice and Equality Move ment, insist the pro-government militias known as Janjaweed must first be reined in and disarmed. Before talks ended Tliesday, Su danese government spokesman Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim said the government would propose giv ing different areas in Darfur more autonomy under a federal system that could include a parliament for every region there. “We see the solution to the politi cal issue as lying in ... the federal solution in Darfur,” he said. The previous round of peace talks in Nigeria ended in a deadlock in September over the same securi ty and aid issues. The U.N. Security Council has warned it would consider sanctions if the Sudanese government fails to disarm all militia and restore peace. The Security Council is to meet in Nairobi, Kenya, Nov. 18-20 to dis cuss the crisis, Jan Pronk, the top U.N. envoy for Sudan, said Monday. The United Nations has called Darfur the world’s worst humani tarian crisis and said it has claimed 70,000 lives since March, while 1.5 million have fled their homes since February 2003. The crisis in Sudan’s western re gion began when African rebels rose up against the Arab-dominat ed government, claiming discrimi nation in the distribution of scarce resources in the large, arid region. Major bloodshed erupted when the Janjaweed reacted by unleashing attacks on Darfur villages. The U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday that almost 25 percent of children under five years of age in Darfur are malnourished and more help will be needed because the harvest is expected to fail. The Justice and Equality Move ment has accused the government of violating an April cease-fire by bombing towns and villages around the eastern Darfur town of Allaiat, a key base of the group. The bombings displaced about 7,000 people and cast doubt over the likely success of the talks, the rebel group said. It could give no details on casualties. Sudanese officials said govern ment forces were simply defending their own positions from rebel at tack — not targeting civilians or in surgents. The attack started last week and ended on Monday, after an AU cease-fire commission visited the area, the two sides said. 400 tons of high explosives missing from Iraq military base The U.N.'s report to the Security Council questions America's security efforts after the 2003 Baghdad invasion BY KIMBERLY HEFLING THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the fall of Baghdad did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of ex plosives that are missing from the site, the Unit spokesman said TUesday. When troops from the 101st Air borne Division’s 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already loot ers throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press. The soldiers “secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemi cal weapons were not present in their area,” Wellman wrote in an e mail message. “Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area. “Orders were not given from high er to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq,” he wrote. His remarks appeared to confirm the observations of an NBC reporter embedded with the army unit who said Tliesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives during their 24 hours at the facility en route to Bagh dad, 30 miles to the north. ' Their comments came two weeks af ter Iraq’s Ministry of Science and Tech nology told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives had vanished from the former military in stallation as a result of “theft and loot ing ... due to lack of security.” The letter said the explosives were stolen some time after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9,2003. The disappearance, which the U.N. nuclear agency reported to the Security Council on Monday, has raised questions about why the Unit ed States didn’t do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full inter national inspections to resume after the March 2003 invasion. Kerry campaign sees 'tragic series of blunders' On Tliesday, Russia, citing the dis appearance of the explosives, called on the U.N. Security Council to dis cuss the return of U.N. weapons in spectors to Iraq. But the United States said American inspectors were inves tigating the loss and that there was no need for U.N. experts to return. The missing explosives have be come a major issue in the final week of the presidential campaign, with Vice President Dick Cheney question ing on TUesday whether the explo sives were still at the facility when U.S. troops arrived, and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a “tragic series of blun ders” by the Bush administration. As the missing explosives became a heated campaign issue, NBC News quoted Army officials on condition of anonymity TUesday night that troops from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division arrived at Al-Qaqaa on April 4, finding “looters everywhere” carrying what they could on their backs. The troops searched bunkers and found conven tional weapons but no high explosives, NBC quoted the officials as saying. The network said that with more than 1,000 buildings, the complex was so large that it was not clear the troops even saw the bunkers that might have held the explosives. Earlier TUesday, NBC News re porter Lai Ling Jew, who accompa nied the 101st Airborne, said the unit seized Al-Qaqaa on April 10 — a day after Baghdad fell — and remained there for 24 hours before joining the 3rd Infantry Division in the capital. “We still had Iraqi troops in Bagh dad wewt.e trying to combat,” said Wellman, the 101 ^t Airborne spokesman. “Our mission was secur ing Baghdad at that point.” The NBC correspondent told MSNBC that “there wasn’t a search.” “The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad,” she said. “As far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away.” She said there was no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they left. The roads were cut off “so it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there,” she said. Pentagon searched but found no weapons Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday that coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the facility but found none of the ex plosives in question. “The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility,” Whitman said. It was unclear whether the search to which Whitman was referring was conducted by a military unit other than the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade. Wellman, the army unit’s spokesman, said the facility was in the lOlst’s sector at that time but that he does not know if any troops were left at the grounds of the facility once the combat troops from the 2nd Brigade left. Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the Pen tagon’s deputy undersecretary of de fense for intelligence, said that on May 27, 2003, a U.S. military team specifically looking for weapons went to the site but did not find any thing with IAEA stickers on it. The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be. Boykin said that the Pentagon was investigating whether the infor mation was handed on to anyone else at the time. The explosives had been housed in storage bunkers at the facility. U.N. nu clear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time on March 15, 2003 and reported that the seals were not broken; there fore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country in advance of the invasion lat er that month. The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated bomb at tacks on U.S.-led multinational forces and Iraqi police and national guards men. But HMX is also a “dual use” substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction. Both HMX and RDX are key com ponents in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so power ful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. u'f/Jt ctc/tci Yf{/(//&Ht/s Cfipo^ec/ (t)u//Ae 'ft'u/c/o&jt <?/'<?^/m///o h/: 1st Annual Telluride Mountain Film Festival Featuring: “Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” as well as action films - kayak, rock climb, base jumping, and more! Thursday, October 28th $6 for UO Students, Co-OP and CWP Members 'T^r Cultural V Forum Now Hiring Regional Music Coordinator Bring your favorite bands to campus! Application due 10/28 noon Apps in Cultural Forum EMU suite 2 OR email cultural@uoregon.edu UNIVERSITY OF OREGON Advertise in the ODE classifieds 346-4343
