GENEVA—The United Nations new human rights watchdog agreed on Wednesday to send a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuses against the civilian population.
The move, seen as a way to increase international pressure on Khartoum to accept U.N. peacekeepers, coincided with a call from the U.S. Sudan envoy for the country to act within the next week to help the U.N. bolster African Union (AU) forces.
Envoy Andrew Natsios said he had had productive talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and they had agreed on steps to make progress to halt violence which aid officials say has killed more than 200,000 in the past three years.
"So the next week will be critically important for all of us to make this progress," Natsios told reporters in Khartoum.
Khartoum disputes the Darfur death toll and pins the blame for violations on rebel groups that are still fighting. It had no immediate comment on the plan to send a U.N. rights mission.
The proposal approved by the 47-state Human Rights Council, launched in June as part of U.N. reform and under pressure to show it can act effectively on Darfur, left the council chairman to name the five "highly qualified" team members. It was a consensus deal agreed after two days of tough haggling.
A leading think tank and an international human rights group said on the eve of a European Union summit on Thursday the EU should support tough new sanctions against Sudanese leaders for failing to end rights abuses in Darfur.
"It's time for the screws to be tightened on Khartoum," former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, said in a statement.
He said Bashir had "just been laughing at the 'do this or else' resolutions" passed by the U.N. Security Council and needed to be pressed to stop attacks on civilians, accept a proposed new African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force, and cooperate fully in political settlement efforts.
"Empty Commitments"
"Millions of civilians are paying the price for nearly four years of unkept promises and empty commitments," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
To back its 2005 demand that the Sudanese government cease offensive military flights over Darfur, the U.N. Security Council should immediately establish a "No Fly Zone", supported by France and Germany in particular, if aerial attacks on civilians again intensified, the groups said.
Britain would agree to a no-fly zone over Sudan's Darfur region as part of a U.N. sanctioned "Plan B" to halt violence in Darfur, Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said, citing comments made by Blair in Washington last week.
The comments implied he saw sanctions as some way off.
"If, in the next weeks and next couple of months or so the Sudanese government are not prepared to agree to the U.N. plan, then we've got to move to sanctions and we've got to move to tougher action," a transcript of Blair's remarks said.
"I think we should certainly consider the option of a no-fly zone to help people in Darfur, because it's a very, very serious situation and it's now spilling into other countries next door."
The rights group and think tank also called on the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity and threaten tough action against any future crimes.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said ahead of a report to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that he plans to indict suspects for atrocities in Darfur by February—nearly two years after he was asked to probe the region.
The Sudanese government is accused of backing Janjaweed militia groups which U.N. human rights officials blame for some of the worst offences, including rape and wide-scale murder. It rejects the charges and says Western countries are trying to re-colonise it in pursuit of its oil wealth.
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