based Arab News quoted Sudanese Vice President Ali Othman Mahmoud Taha, who met with the MWL delegation yesterday, as saying that certain interest groups were projecting Darfur as the biggest humanitarian crisis to turn world attention away from the Zionist crimes in Palestine. The vice president accused that the southern rebel movement of John Garang had played a big role in politicizing the Darfur problem. "Garang's movement encouraged armed groups to attack police stations in Darfur and they killed hundreds of people. They also triggered tribal war in the region," Taha told the MWL delegation. He said the Sudanese government had carried out a number of development projects worth $75 million in Darfur in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank and other aid agencies. "But the United Nations and other donor agencies fulfilled only 37 percent of their commitments," the vice president said. On Wednesday, President Bashir pointed out that only 20 percent of Darfur's population was affected by the present tribal conflicts. "There are five million people in Darfur, of whom four million are not affected," he told the delegation.
