Both Sudan's government and Darfur rebels criticised a UN report which accused Khartoum and allied militias of atrocities in the country's western region but stopped short of calling the violence genocide. The UN report, released on Monday, recommended that unnamed government officials and militia leaders be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for widespread and systematic abuses, which may constitute crimes against humanity.
Khartoum officials said the report was unfair, emotional and had come to some incorrect conclusions. The two main rebel groups said the report was mistaken and investigators did not visit the worst areas of fighting where mass graves are hidden.
"We are going to show that there are some claims which are false and there are some misreadings of some facts in some situations - therefore as it stands now (the report) is not fair to Sudan," the head of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) Ibrahim Ahmed Omar told Reuters in Khartoum on Tuesday.
Omar welcomed the fact that the report did not agree with the US assertion that there was genocide in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed during a two-year-old uprising. Khartoum will present its comments on the report to the UN Security Council before the end of the week.
The commission handed a sealed list of names of suspects responsible for war crimes and a large file of evidence to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to be used if Darfur is taken to the ICC, as it recommends.
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