Sudan brushes off sanctions threat over Darfur
Sudan has dismissed Western threats to use sanctions and no-fly zones to pressure the country into accepting United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur.
But a Sudanese politician said Khartoum may permit UN peacekeepers to patrol Darfur in exchange for immunity from prosecution for officials charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million people displaced in nearly four years of fighting in Darfur, in western Sudan. The government opposes a UN Security Council plan to replace an overwhelmed African Union peacekeeping mission of 7,000 troops with 20,000 UN peacekeepers.
The government has often been accused of breaking UN Security Council resolutions by using warplanes to bomb targets in Darfur and killing civilians.
Tony Blair said this week he would favour enforcing a no-fly zone over Darfur, similar to those imposed on northern and southern Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein.
It is not clear how no-fly zones could be maintained over Darfur, located in the centre of the African continent far from US bases and aircraft carriers.
The US State Department raised the possibility of imposing tougher sanctions on Khartoum, with the aim of forcing the Sudanese to accept UN intervention. The International Criminal Court said it would begin filing indictments against suspected Darfur war criminals in February.
Last year, UN investigators said 51 people, including senior Sudanese government officials, were responsible for atrocities in Darfur.
“Threats of sanctions and military action, or the imposition of a no-flight zone will not help resolve the problem” in Darfur, Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq said yesterday.
“This problem (Darfur) is a political one, and it should be remedied through political channels.”
An adviser to the Sudanese president, Maghzoub Faidul, said he hoped the US and British governments had “learned their lessons from the past”, an apparent reference to their invasion of Iraq.
“Force alone and unilateral sanctions and threats have never resolved any problem in any area of the world,” Faidul said.
Possible sanctions on Sudan include restrictions on its booming oil industry and a naval blockade of its only major port – Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
China, which has veto rights in the UN Security Council, could reject such measures. It is the major foreign investor in the Sudanese oil fields.
Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir accuses the West of exaggerating the Darfur crisis, claiming the number of casualties is 20 times lower than UN estimates. He rejects UN peacekeepers as a neo-colonial force and says Sudanese citizens cannot be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court because his government, like Washington, has not ratified the convention behind the tribunal.
A senior legislator, a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement that fought the government until 2005, said the government had asked his group to broker a deal by which UN peacekeepers would be allowed in Darfur in exchange for immunity from prosecution for Sudanese suspected of war crimes.
The politician, who spoke anonymously, has said Khartoum opposes UN peacekeepers because it fears their deployment will make it easier to prosecute those indicted by the international court.
“If the international community guarantees immunity, the crisis will be over in Darfur,” he said.
Government officials could not reached for comment on the legislator’s remarks.
