| 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.
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