Excerpts: Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir

SAM DEALEY:

What aspect of responsibility do you take, then, for Darfur? As we said, there have obviously been some issues as with any more, but were mistakes made?

OMAR AL-BASHIR:

Any government in the world, when facing an armed rebellion, has a constitutional, legal and moral obligation to resist these militants. This happens everywhere. You will find in all the world's countries that militants that take up arms against a government are classified as "terrorists." Even those who resist occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are classified today as "terrorists." Except in Sudan, when some take up arms, the government is [considered] guilty! This is a clear targeting of the government.

As a government, it is our responsibility to maintain security for all citizens in Darfur. A rebellion happened there, from a small group, and any attempt to picture the militants as representatives of the people of Darfur is a big mistake. This is a minority of outlaws that initiated military operations against the government. The government did its best [in the beginning] to accommodate the situation peacefully, and did not react until the rebels rejected all attempts to reach a peaceful solution.

When the rebels attacked El Fashir, the capital and largest city in Darfur, attacked the airport, destroyed a number of airplanes and even occupied parts of the city, the government then had to fulfill its responsibility.

SAM DEALEY:

So there are no actions specifically though which you feel in retrospect were mistakes, or….

OMAR AL-BASHIR:

In any war, mistakes happen on the ground; this is not the policy of the government. We are a government that functions according to laws. The security apparatus functions according to laws and whoever intentionally transgresses [the laws] is held accountable to law. We are the only country, in the Third World at least, that removed immunity from members of the armed forces, police and security and took them to trial. They were tried and some members of these forces were even executed, because they transgressed. Human mistakes happen .We've seen greater mistakes committed than what has happened in Darfur by ten times in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we hold accountable and put to trial persons [who break the law], as a responsible government.

SAM DEALEY:

"Do you still maintain that only ten thousand have died in Darfur?"

OMAR AL-BASHIR:

This is what we believe the number to be according to all the events that have taken place in Darfur. There is fighting between the armed forces and the rebels, so there are [a number of deaths] among the rebels and members of the armed forces. There are also tribal conflicts, which are not connected to any ethnic group [in particular]; it is not, as portrayed, an "ethnic war."

Most of the intra-tribal fighting in fact is between tribes of Arab origins over resources, because years of drought that hit the area, made the scarcity of resources one reason for conflict, between nomads and peasants, between nomads themselves because gazing lands have become limited, because of the decline in rainfall. Conflict, therefore, between youth that heard their livestock is likely. We maintain that there is a problem in Darfur, and its main reason is environmental before anything else.