Atrocities daily in Sudan's Darfur-UN rights chief

GENEVA, Nov 29 (Reuters) Atrocities are occurring daily in Sudan's Darfur region and rape and pillage directed against civilians are at ''a horrific level,'' United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said today.

She told the world body's Human Rights Council that the Sudanese government and militias linked to and supported by it were ''responsible for the most serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law'' in Darfur.

In a separate news conference, outgoing UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said tens of thousands of people driven from their homes have been dying from hunger and disease in a crisis that was growing worse by the day.

Egeland said 4 million people in the region and in neighbouring Chad, to where many civilians from Darfur have fled, needed emergency assistance, but the Sudanese government was not helping aid agencies to get relief in.

But a senior government official in Darfur denied that the situation had worsened and said that Sudan was the victim of misinformation.

''There is an international campaign to offer false data to the international public opinion, including this Council,'' Dr Farah Mustafa, deputy governor of the state of South Darfur, told the rights body.

''The information about hundreds of thousands of killed is untrue,'' he said.

The remarks from the two senior UN officials followed assertions yesterday by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir that the crisis in the region had been exaggerated and that reports of deteriorating security were lies.

In her address to the 47-nation Council, a majority of whose members yesterday called for an end to rights violations in Darfur but avoided any criticism of Khartoum, Arbour said: ''The ongoing atrocities must stop.'' They were, she added, ''a daily occurrence.'' ANSWERS NEEDED UN monitors were reporting that attacks by government-allied militias were continuing and that the militias were consolidating in government-controlled areas where they were receiving more weapons.

''The (Sudanese) government must provide convincing answers regarding its well-documented links with the militia, as well as the possible criminal culpability of its officials in aiding or abetting acts committed by the militia on the government's behalf,'' said Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court judge.

But Mustafa said if Arbour had evidence of government collusion with militias, she should produce it.

The yesterday resolution by the Council, its first on Darfur since it was launched in June to replace the old Human Rights Commission with the aim of boosting UN action in rights crises, recognised ''the seriousness'' of the situation in Darfur.

But African and Muslim countries -- backed by Russia, China and Cuba -- refused to accept additional wording that would have called for Arbour to draw up a new report on Darfur and underlined Khartoum's responsibility to stop rights violations.

REUTERS PB BD2219