UN rights body sends mission of inquiry to Darfur

GENEVA, Dec 13 (Reuters) The United Nations new human rights watchdog agreed today to send a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuses against the civilian population.

The 47-state Human Rights Council, which is holding its first special session on Darfur, approved a consensus proposal that left the naming of the five ''highly qualified'' team members up to the council chairman.

The Council, launched in June as part of UN reform, was under pressure to show it can act effectively on Darfur where aid officials say more than 200,000 have died in violence over the past three years.

''I think that we can be proud of this result,'' Finland's ambassador Vesa Himanen said on behalf of the European Union following the decision.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the opening session yesterday the Council must help end the ''nightmare'' of violence by sending a ''clear and united message ... that the current situation is simply unacceptable.'' After two days of tough haggling over membership of the mission, it was agreed that Council chairman, Mexican ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, should name the team and that it would be accompanied by the UN special investigator for Sudan, Sima Samar of Afghanistan.

The EU and its allies had feared that an initial African call for the team to be made up of Council ambassadors would have left it without the authority to carry out an investigation and produce clear recommendations.

Khartoum and its backers on the Council, brushing aside reports from Annan and other top officials, say the situation in Darfur, where long-simmering ethnic violence erupted into war in 2003, has improved since a peace treaty earlier this year with one leading rebel group.

It also disputes the death toll in the region, where over 2 million have been driven from their homes, and pins the blame for rights' violations on rebel groups that are still fighting.

Western diplomats say there is already abundant information available about what is happening in Darfur and the main point of a mission is to increase international pressure on Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers for the region.

The Sudanese government, which is accused of backing Janjaweed militia groups which UN human rights officials blame for some of the worst offences, including rape and wide-scale murder, says Western countries are trying to re-colonise it in pursuit of its oil wealth.

The Darfur debate was seen as important for the credibility of the Council, which has been accused of focusing on alleged Israeli violations in Palestinian territory and Lebanon and ignoring what the UN sees as a huge humanitarian crisis.

REUTERS PDM BD2211