(Corrects time frame for deaths in paragraph 4)
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The situation in Sudan's western Darfur region, which Washington has described as genocide, has subsided into a "low-intensity conflict," a top international envoy said Monday.
Briefing the U.N. Security Council, the joint U.N.-African Union special representative to Darfur, Rodolphe Adada, told the 15 member states that around 130-150 people were dying each month due to violence in Darfur, a region roughly the size of France.
"The situation has changed from the period of intense hostilities in 2003-2004 when tens of thousands of people were killed," Adada told the council. "Today, in purely numerical terms it is a low-intensity conflict."
According to figures collected by the U.N.-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, some 2,000 people died from violence in the region between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, one third of them civilians.
The council was discussing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest report on UNAMID, in which he warns that Khartoum's decision to expel 13 foreign and three domestic humanitarian aid organizations had put "over 1 million people at life-threatening risk" in Darfur.
Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, dismissed the report, saying the estimate was "a big lie."
Khartoum said it expelled the humanitarian aid agencies because they collaborated with the Hague-based International Criminal Court, which issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last month.
The court charged Bashir with plotting mass killings and deportations across Darfur.
Adada's assessment differs from the way Washington has viewed events in Darfur. Former U.S. President George W. Bush's administration referred to the conflict as "genocide in slow motion," saying many deaths resulted from disease, neglect and poor conditions in crowded refugee camps.
President Barack Obama's envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, reaffirmed on January 26 that Darfur was in the midst of "ongoing genocide."
Many non-governmental organizations also support the view that Darfur is still in the throes of genocide orchestrated by the Khartoum government, a charge it rejects.
U.N. officials say as many as 300,000 people have died and more than 2.7 million driven from their homes in almost six years of ethnic and political violence. Some 4.7 million people rely on humanitarian aid. Khartoum, says only 10,000 people have died.
