UN mission probes Darfur violence

The government is accused of tolerating ethnic cleansing in Darfur

The United Nations has launched a 10-day mission to investigate alleged human rights abuses by government-backed Arab militias in Darfur.

UN spokeswoman Annick Stevenson said human rights experts had started interviewing refugees, mostly black Sudanese, who had fled to Chad.

She said the team would go to Sudan if allowed by the government.

Darfur rebel groups and the Sudanese government are holding talks in Chad, with international observers present.

The two delegations had a brief face-to-face meeting - their first - in the Chadian foreign ministry on Tuesday, and direct talks are expected to continue.

Reuters reports that the rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) insisted on the presence of international mediators.

But the government says Darfur is a regional conflict and does not want to internationalise it.

Race against time

The fighting in Darfur, western Sudan, has been raging for more than a year.

Last week, UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland accused the government in Khartoum of tolerating "ethnic cleansing" by Arab militias.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced, with more than 100,000 fleeing across the border into Chad.

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, says it is now a race against time to move the refugees further inland before the rainy season begins in a few weeks.

Speaking in Geneva, the agency's emergency coordinator for Chad, Yvan Sturm, said so far only around 22,000 refugees had been moved to safety and that aid workers faced major logistical problems moving the rest.

The UN is struggling with sand storms, no shade and no water.

But in just two months time the transport trucks will be immobilised, stuck on muddy, unsurfaced roads, when the rainy season begins.

The UNHCR wants to move 65,000 refugees hundreds of kilometres inland - away from the Sudanese border - before that happens.

Mr Egeland said the UN was getting daily reports of atrocities from Darfur.

He said it appeared to be an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing, with villages looted and burnt down and food and seed supplies destroyed in a "scorched earth" policy.

Mr Egeland said the international community should put pressure on Sudan to rein in the Arab militias.

But the Sudanese government has denied the allegations.