Sudan Blocks Visit of U.N. Official to Darfur 
By Marc Lacey
April 3, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/world/africa/03cnd-sudan.html

NAIROBI, Kenya, April 3 — The government of Sudan today blocked a planned visit by the United Nations' top humanitarian official to the western Darfur region, prompting the official, Jan Egeland, to accuse Khartoum of attempting to hide the dire conditions there.
The Sudanese government offered various explanations for the decision not to allow Mr. Egeland, who is the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, to visit Khartoum, the capital, or Darfur, the region where a war has raged for three years.
A Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jamal Ibrahim, said the visit, which was scheduled to begin today, was merely postponed because it would have coincided with the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. He also said in an interview with BBC that it would not have been safe for Mr. Egeland, a Norwegian, to visit the country given the recent controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper.
But the United Nations said that the trip had been planned well in advance and that the objections from Sudanese authorities appeared to be politically motivated.
I think it is because they don't want me to see how bad it is in Darfur, Mr. Egeland said in an interview with Reuters in southern Sudan, which operates semi-autonomously and did give approval for Mr. Egeland's visit.
In the latest wave of attacks in Darfur, Mr. Egeland said thousands of people have been chased from 60 villages by government-backed Janjaweed militias. He said the deteriorating security environment has made it increasingly difficult to provide assistance to the more than two million displaced people living in camps in Darfur and across the border in Chad.
The United Nations said the governor, or wali, of South Darfur, where Mr. Egeland had been scheduled to visit, had opposed his arrival there. In addition, the United Nations said the Sudanese government's representatives to the United Nations stated that Mr. Egeland would not be welcome in Darfur or Khartoum.
Relations between the Sudanese and the United Nations are particularly sensitive now because of the world body's plans later this year to take over the running of the African Union peacekeeping mission currently under way in Darfur. Underfunded and limited in its ability to quell the violence, the 7,000-strong African Union force is viewed as more neutral by the Sudanese, who oppose the arrival of any Western troops in Darfur.
Prompted by the government, Sudanese citizens have taken to the streets on several occasions to protest United Nations forces, which they often equate with an American role in Sudan.
Mr. Egeland has played a major role in focusing international attention on Darfur, which he declared the world's worst humanitarian crisis in early 2004. Although he has stopped short of calling the conflict a genocide, as the Bush administration has done, Mr. Egeland has laid much of the blame for the suffering there at the feet of government officials. Sudanese authorities, in turn, contend that antigovernment rebels stoke much of the chaos in Darfur but earn little international wrath for their role.
Mr. Egeland said his planned trip was intended to draw attention to and raise money for the displaced people of Darfur and other nearby conflict zones. The aid operation in Darfur and southern Sudan, which is emerging from nearly two decades of war, amounts to $1.5 billion a year. Before arriving in Sudan, Mr. Egeland visited northern Uganda, where rebels have abducted thousands of children and forced them to fight on their behalf.