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[igotthisguitar]

Jimmy Carter Faces Down Darfur Officials
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer

KABKABIYA, Sudan - Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security services who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet with refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound. He was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security officers stopped him.

"You can't go. It's not on the program!" the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as "The Elders."



"We're going to anyway!" an angry Carter retorted as a crowd began to gather. "You don't have the power to stop me."

U.N. officials told Carter's entourage the Sudanese state police could bar his way. Carter's traveling companions, billionaire businessman Richard Branson and Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, tried to ease his frustration and his Secret Service detail urged him to get into a car and leave.

"I'll tell President Bashir about this," Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Carter later agreed to a compromise by which tribal representatives would be brought to him at another location later Wednesday. But the refugee delegates never showed up.

The Darfur conflict began when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed � a charge it denies. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in four years of violence.

Most refugees appeared too frightened to speak in Kabkabiya, a North Darfur town that has long been a stronghold of the pro-government janjaweed militia.

Branson said some refugees had slipped notes in his pockets. "We (are) still suffering from the war as our girls are being raped on a daily basis," read one of the notes, translated from Arabic, that Branson handed to The Associated Press.

The note said that on Sept. 26, a group of girls had been raped, and a refugee had also been shot two days ago. Branson said it had been handed over by an ethnic African man.



The visit by "The Elders," which is headed by Nobel Peace laureates Carter and Desmond Tutu, is largely a symbolic move by a host of respected figures to push all sides to make peace. Tutu visited a refugee camp in south Darfur, but the U.N. Mission in Sudan deemed it too dangerous for Carter to make a similar visit.

CONT'D ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_re_af/darfur
;_ylt=ApOmeT_GFmuIeBXf0IaFq5wDW7oF

[Ya-ta Boy]

President Carter continues to amaze me. Looking at that picture of him, he is clearly becoming frail with age, but he still puts himself through the difficulties of international travel to go to trouble-spots to try to help, in the service of humanity. He is an admirable public figure. Someone once called him 'our greatest ex-president'. They may have been right.

[igotthisguitar]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[igotthisguitar]

Once again, Mr. Carter is in my books worthy of great respect & admiration.

He has long struck me as a truly NOBLE being with significant integrity & scruples.

Other so-called 'leaders' meanwhile ...

[keane]

[Ya-ta Boy]

JQ Adams served as a representative for quite some time after he was president. He played a role in the abolitionist movement. But yes, I agree, Carter is an admirable ex-president.