KHARTOUM: A United Nations team has begun investigating allegations of genocide against the Sudanese Government as ethnic-minority rebels accuse the army and its militia allies of destroying the evidence of mass graves in Darfur.
The five-member panel, which arrived in Khartoum on Monday evening, held meetings with Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and Justice Minister Ali Mohamed Yassin.
Mr Ismail said he had promised his Government's full co-operation with the team set up by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to investigate charges that Khartoum's bloody 21-month-old clampdown against the Darfur rebels amounted to genocide.
"The commission is supposed to be a neutral body and will therefore be offered an opportunity to obtain all the information it needs to make its decision," he said.
"The Government welcomes the commission because it has nothing to hide and, instead, concedes that there is a problem in Darfur and, if it is offered a chance, any unbiased body can reach the truth, a matter which will help refute the tremendous allegations about Darfur."
But as the team began work, one of the two Darfur rebel factions accused Khartoum-sponsored Arab militias of destroying the evidence of their abuses in the restive western region where the UN estimates 50,000 people have died and 1.4 million more have been driven from their homes.
Sudan Liberation Movement spokesman Mahmud Hussein said militiamen had been seen emptying a mass grave in Kabkabiya, west of the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher.
"They were removing corpses," he said by telephone from the Nigerian capital Abuja. "It's a plan to obliterate the truth."
The German and US governments have backed accusations by human rights watchdogs that the scorched-earth policy adopted against minority villagers suspected of supporting the Darfur rebels amounts to genocide by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.
The UN team is headed by Antonio Cassesse of Italy. Its other members are Mohamed Fayek of Egypt, Diego Garcia-Sayan of Peru, Hina Gilani of Pakistan and Therese Striggner-Scott of Ghana.
African Union mediators, meanwhile, held talks with government and rebel representatives, but the two sides remained deadlocked.
In the latest setback, Khartoum refused to join the rebels in signing a protocol that includes a clause to create a "no-fly zone" over Darfur.
Chief mediator Ahmad Allam-Mi of Chad said three or four more days of consultations would probably be necessary in this second round of peace talks that began on October 21.
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