Mick Hartley

This sums up pretty well the level of commitment of the Sudanese government to ending the crisis in Darfur:

Sudanese authorities are holding up 100,000 tonnes of sorghum meant for Darfur, alleging that it is genetically modified, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday.

The sorghum, which comes from the United States, is being held up at Port Sudan, a World Food Programme spokeswoman in Rome said, adding that laboratory tests had shown it was not genetically modified.

“We had it tested by a French laboratory along with Canadian split peas which the Sudanese are also objecting to, and neither food consignment is GM. In any case, there is no GM sorghum on the market, it doesn’t exist,” said the WFP’s Caroline Hurford.

Meanwhile it’s business as usual:

The African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in West Darfur told the United Nations on Wednesday that Arab militias were killing and pillaging in the region without arrests by the Sudanese authorities.

Major Harry Soko, a Rwandan officer who briefed the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said that the presence of Sudanese rebel groups in his area had also led to conflict and hundreds of deaths in the past several months.

“Arab militias believed to be employed by the (Sudanese government) … roam freely in our area of responsibility, threatening and killing anybody against the interests of the government,” he told Antonio Guterres, the visiting U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

An African Union police commander, who did not give his name, told the same briefing that the militias committed crimes from banditry to rape and Sudanese police did not arrest them.