From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Nov 30 2009 - 09:52:22 EST
Report urges sanctions against Sudan ruling party
Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:04am GMT
* Sudan's UN envoy says Darfur activists are "war mongers"
* U.S. urged to push China to pressure Khartoum
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The United States and other world powers
should impose sanctions on key members of the Sudanese government for
refusing to end violence in Darfur and south Sudan, a report by an
anti-genocide group said on Monday.
Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem reacted angrily to the
report, calling the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide group,
"war mongers."
The Enough Project's report said there was a risk of a new civil war and
warned that nationwide elections next year and a 2011 referendum on whether
the oil-rich and semi-autonomous south should secede from the Khartoum-led
north would not be free and fair.
The report placed the bulk of the blame on the ruling National Congress
Party (NCP) of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted in
March by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes in
Sudan's remote western region of Darfur. The report called for sanctions.
"Without a firm response from the international community, led by the United
States, full-scale nationwide war is inevitable," said the report, written
by Enough Project co-founder and former U.S. State Department and National
Security Council official John Prendergast.
"This should involve a special outreach effort to China because of the
vulnerability of its oil investments should war resume in the South," the
report said. "The United States must, then, organize and lead a multilateral
diplomatic surge in Sudan aimed at negotiating and consolidating national
peace."
It recommended "multilateral asset freezes aimed at key members of the NCP
who have enriched themselves as a result of the oil boom of the last decade
in Sudan." The report also supported travel bans and denying Khartoum access
to the debt relief it has been lobbying for.
Sudan's U.N. envoy Abdalhaleem rejected the report.
"Those war mongers and war traders are in a race with time to stop the peace
train which is already moving to its destination," he told Reuters. "Their
report exposes their bankruptcy and the fact that realities on the ground
.... defeated their sick mentality."
DISAPPOINTMENT
The head of Save Darfur, a separate coalition of more than 180 religious,
political, and human rights organizations, backed the main conclusions of
the Enough Project report.
"Coordinated multilateral action is crucial to promoting peace in Sudan, and
that action has to deal with the reality that the core of the problem is the
ruling National Congress Party's seeking to maintain its domination of power
and wealth," Save Darfur president Jerry Fowler told Reuters.
"It is difficult for me to see how a strategy that doesn't include pressure
could succeed," he said.
Behind the complaints of Darfur activists is disappointment with U.S.
President Barack Obama's administration, which took nearly 10 months to
formulate and announce a new Sudan policy that they worry is not being
implemented aggressively enough.
That strategy calls for renewed U.S. economic sanctions on Sudan, but also
offers Khartoum new incentives to end violence in Darfur and the South ahead
of polls next year.
The former head of the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur
said earlier this year that the six-year conflict in Darfur was essentially
over.
But that assessment was contradicted by a recent report of U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said that fighting between the Sudanese
army and rebels continued, civilians remained at risk, and peacekeepers were
routinely harassed by government forces.
U.N. diplomats and analysts say China's opposition to U.N. sanctions on
Khartoum remains steadfast. Beijing holds a veto on the U.N. Security
Council, which means it has the power to block any resolution imposing U.N.
sanctions on Khartoum.
They also warn that a 2005 peace deal between the North and South that ended
a two-decade civil war is unraveling.
The United Nations says more than 2 million people were driven from their
homes and some 300,000 people died in the Darfur crisis, although levels of
conflict have fallen since the mass killings of 2003 and 2004. Khartoum puts
the death toll at 10,000.
((louis.charbonneau@thomsonreuters.com; +1 212 355 6053; Reuters Messaging:
louis.charbonneau.reuters.com@reuters.net))
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