Sudan slams "unbalanced" report by UN

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Sudan slams "unbalanced" report by UN rights rapporteur

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News Article by AFP posted on November 08, 2002 at 15:10:43: EST (-5 GMT)

Sudan slams "unbalanced" report by UN rights rapporteur

KHARTOUM, Nov 8 (AFP) -- The Sudanese government slammed as "unbalanced" a report drawn up by the UN human rights rapporteur following a visit to the civil war-hit country in October, an official daily reported Friday.

Yasser Sidahmed of the government's advisory council on human rights charged that Gerhart Baum's report was "unbalanced" as it did not refer to violations by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

The report included "a new allegation" about religious discrimination in Sudan "despite positive developments which the report has ignored," the council's rapporteur also said, quoted by Al-Anbaa daily.

He pointed out that the government, in response to suggestions by Baum, had set up a Christian advisory council within its guidance ministry and appointed a non-Muslim in the ministry's churches administration.

But Sidahmed gave no more details on Baum's report or his mission.

The government agreed to last month's visit after initially having refused to meet Baum in protest at his request for details on how Khartoum spends its oil revenues.

Following a visit to Sudan in October 2001, Baum said in a report that the internally displaced persons in Sudan, now living in camps, had fled from the country's oil regions.

"They did not benefit from the (oil) money, although the government used the argument that the revenues were being spent on those people," the rapporteur said at the time.

Government officials criticized that report as a violation of Sudan's sovereignty.

The rebel SPLA movement, representing the mainly animist and Christian south, has been at war against successive Islamic and Arab governments in Khartoum since 1983.

But the government and rebels have since July been holding peace talks in Kenya under the auspices of the United States and an East African regional grouping, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).