Sudan pledged on Saturday to disarm Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, who have driven more than one million Africans from their homes in western Sudan and said it would allow human rights monitors to be deployed.
The pledge was given at the end of a visit to Sudan by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has focussed attention on the situation in the western Darfur area which the United Nations has called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
"The government of Sudan commits itself to the following: Immediately start to disarm the Janjaweed and other armed outlaw groups... Allow the deployment of human rights monitors," the government and the United Nations said in a joint communiqué.
"The government of Sudan and the United Nations agreed to form a high-level joint implementation mechanism for this agreement," the communique added.
Washington, which sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Khartoum this week, and rights groups say the Janjaweed are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in an area where tensions run high between nomadic Arabs and African farmers.
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said on Friday that Sudan would deploy more forces to rein in the Janjaweed, as well as rebels who launched a revolt last year accusing Khartoum of arming the militias. Khartoum denies the charge. The rebels signed a shaky cease-fire with the government in April, but each side has accused the other of violations.
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