Top officials: U.S. to impose Sudan sanctions soon

Source: CNN.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States will impose tough new measures against Sudan, likely within days, to try to force it to change course on Darfur and aims to pressure Khartoum militarily by helping rebuild forces in the south, U.S. officials said.

State Department, Defense, Treasury and other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the goal was to “tighten the screws” on President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and have him accept an international force in the vast western province.

A White House announcement on sanctions and a further limit on dollar transactions was expected very soon, a State Department official said.

Military options like a no-fly zone over Darfur — which Britain wants — or a forced intervention have been ruled out for now, but the Pentagon has done some “back of the envelope” calculations on what might be needed, a defense official said.

Some Sudan experts said the new sanctions were too little, too late.

“This is the right idea but it is simply not enough and not multilateral enough to make an impact, a dent, in the calculations of the Sudanese regime,” said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group.

The United States had threatened an unspecified “Plan B” by January 1 if Bashir did not agree to a U.N./African Union force in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in what Washington says is this century’s first genocide.

That deadline passed but it was Bashir’s comments that he would not accept a hybrid force that pushed the administration to roll out “Plan B,” senior officials said.

One idea: Bolster military force in the south

The U.S. government is also looking at how to change the military equation in Sudan.

One tactic is to help the government in the south build a strong force out of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army which was at war with the north until a 2005 peace deal.

“If he (Bashir) is faced with a credible force in the south, he will start to relook at how his forces are dispersed and where his risks are,” the defense official said.

But the initial focus will be on putting the financial squeeze on Bashir.

About 130 firms with ties to Sudan’s government, including the two leading oil companies, are already on a U.S. sanctions list barring them from doing business with the United States or from using U.S. financial institutions to do dollar transactions — the favored currency for lucrative oil trades.

Other companies will be added to the list, current sanctions will be tightened and existing loopholes closed, making it harder to do dollar deals.

“The goal is to be more pro-active and have tighter enforcement (of sanctions),” said a Treasury Department official.

Aside from slapping travel and banking restrictions on at least three more Sudanese individuals, including a rebel leader, Washington also wants to put more pressure on splintered rebel groups in Darfur.

‘You have to squeeze them all,’ Khartoum and rebels both

“You have to squeeze them all,” said the defense official. “The goal is to get both Bashir and the rebels to come to the conclusion that they are not going to get anywhere with their current course of action.”

The United States is working closely with Britain, which takes over the presidency of the U.N. Security Council next month, and is planning a new resolution on Darfur.

But a senior U.S. official made clear the United States would not wait months for the United Nations to act.

Britain has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Darfur but the Pentagon sees that as fraught with problems, as it does a forced military intervention which would ostracize Arab nations still smarting from the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“When you look at a no-fly zone, the conclusion that pretty much everyone comes up with is that it will not have any impact at all,” a defense official said.

With Sudan’s limited number of fixed-wing aircraft, it would also be a logistical nightmare maintaining a no-fly zone in an area the size of Texas, the official said.

Calls to use Beijing Games to pressure China on Sudan

Source: CNN.

BEIJING, China (AP) — China on Thursday blasted separate calls by a French politician and a Hollywood actress to use the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games to pressure Beijing into doing more to stop the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region.

In an article published in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow accused Beijing of “bankrolling Darfur’s genocide” and called on director Steven Spielberg and four corporate sponsors to “add their … voices to the growing calls for Chinese action to end the slaughter…”

“We don’t think it is appropriate to link the Olympic Games in Beijing with the Darfur issue and we don’t think it will be popularly accepted or echoed by people around the world,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

“It is a totally misguided approach for people to link the Darfur issue with the Games and try to tip the balance in their favor in order to enhance their own reputation,” he said at a regular press briefing.

China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil and sells it weapons and military aircraft, has opposed sanctions against Sudan.

Beijing, however, urged Sudan earlier this month to follow through on a plan to deploy U.N. peacekeepers to beef up 7,000 African Union troops who have been battling for nearly four years to quell the violence in Darfur.

Farrow wrote:”There is now one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics.”

“That desire may provide a lone point of leverage with a country that has otherwise been impervious to all criticism.” The editorial was co-authored by Farrow’s son, Ronan.

Qin said he did not know who Farrow was and had not read the editorial.

French presidential candidate wants France to boycott Games

Last week, Francois Bayrou, a center-right candidate for France’s presidency, proposed that his country’s athletes boycott the Beijing Games in an effort to make China lean on Sudan’s government.

Qin said he believed people who tried to link the Games with Darfur were unclear about China’s policy on Sudan. He said China hopes “efforts by the international community could improve the humanitarian situation in Darfur and that the region could realize a lasting peace and stability.”

A permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China has come under increasing international pressure to use its influence with Khartoum to resolve the conflict, which erupted in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of neglect.

The Sudanese government is accused of unleashing militias known as the janjaweed, which are blamed for the bulk of the conflict’s atrocities. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in the past four years.

“We are confident that we will hold a successful and high quality Olympic Games in Beijing,” Qin said.

Refugee crisis threatens to overwhelm Chad

Source: CNN.

ABECHE, Chad (AP) — Chadian officials expressed concern Tuesday at the growing number of refugees fleeing the conflict in neighboring Sudan, which the U.N. humanitarian chief feared could become an intolerable burden on the country.

John Holmes visited this eastern Chad town on the second leg of a 10-day trip to the region, one week after the new U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs visited Darfur and South Sudan — part of an effort to improve the bitter conditions under which aid workers have to operate.

“The camps could become an intolerable burden” on eastern Chad’s scarce natural resources, Holmes said.

Violence has increasingly been spreading from Darfur into Chad. Nomads are raiding villages, there are intricate ethnic clashes and both the Chadian and the Sudanese governments have been trading accusations that they support each other’s rebels groups.

“But one big difference between here and Sudan is that at least here authorities are very cooperative,” with the international aid effort, Holmes said after meeting Touka Ramadan Kore, the governor of this eastern Chad region. “Their humanitarian needs are so big that they are happy to have us in the country.”

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur during four years of fighting between local rebels, the Sudanese army and their allied janjaweed militias. More than 2 million live in refugee camps scattered over the vast arid region, while another 230,000 now live in refugee camps on the Chadian side of the border.

But janjaweed raids and fighting by rebels along the 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border has also spread the crisis into Chad itself, and about 140,000 Chadians moved to the refugee camps after their villages were destroyed.

Holmes said he was aware there were situations where refugee camps offered better living conditions than surrounding villages, which was creating tensions.

“We need to have an integrated approach to the whole region,” said Holmes. One of the things he talked about with local authorities was how to ensure natural resources such as water and firewood, along with international aid, were fairly shared by local villagers and refugees.

Aid workers in eastern Chad said they felt they were managing to cope with the refugees from Sudan, but were now more worried with the increasing number of Chadian ones.

“The trend is not going down, because insecurity is still increasing,” Kingsley Amanin, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Abeche, said of the internally displaced. “It’s worrying because we simply don’t have the resources to help them right now.”

Chadian authorities, who provide protection to the refugee camps and often share a common ethnic background with people fleeing from Darfur, said they hoped Holmes’ visit would help raise awareness to the crisis their region is facing.

“Our relations with the U.N. is very good,” said Guede Borgou, the chief of staff for eastern Chad’s governor. He said he hoped Holmes’ visit would further boost cooperation. “It comes at a time when we really need it,” he said.

The Sudanese army bombed a border zone with Chad earlier this month and aid workers fear the flow of refugees will only increase.

The Security Council has made plans to deploy 11,000 U.N. peacekeepers along the border to protect refugees, but Chad’s President Idriss Deby has seemed uncertain about his recent approval for a military component to the mission.

Holmes said his brief did not include discussions on the peacekeeping mission, but said that “deploying a force along the border is a priority” and hoped it would occur soon.

U.N. envoy: ‘Fragile’ balance in Darfur could disintegrate

Source: CNN.

ES SALLAM, Sudan (Reuters) — The new U.N. humanitarian chief warned Sunday that humanitarian efforts in Darfur could collapse if the situation deteriorates and aid workers are prevented from doing their work.

The warning came on a day of unusually heavy condemnation of the violence in Darfur, with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain proposing a no-fly zone over the region and German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying the suffering of the Sudanese people had become “unbearable.”

The U.N. chief, John Holmes, spoke while visiting a refugee camp on the outskirts of the town of El-Fasher in Darfur. He was on his first tour of the troubled region since becoming the international body’s top humanitarian official. (Watch a U.S. senator say too little is being done to help the refugees )

Holmes had been barred by Sudanese soldiers from visiting another camp on Saturday, emphasizing, he said, the difficulties faced by aid workers here.

“This humanitarian effort is fragile,” Holmes said, speaking from a camp that now houses some 45,000 people who have fled the violence. “If the situation deteriorates, it could collapse.”

Holmes, who met with delegates of international aid groups during his two-day visit, said obstruction from Sudan’s government and insecurity on the ground have created an environment where “morale is fragile” and could push aid workers to pull out.

“The risk is high,” he said. “It is not imminent, but if things deteriorate, people may not want to maintain their efforts.”

In need of aid are some 4 million people in Darfur whom the U.N. says have been caught in the midst of fighting between rebels, the government and the pro-government janjaweed.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in four years of fighting, with janjaweed Arab militias held responsible for widespread atrocities against ethnic African civilians.

The U.N. says the conflict has chased 86,000 people from their homes just this year and blames the vast majority of these new refugees on violence perpetrated by central Sudanese government forces or their allied janjaweed militias.

Former rebels aligned with Minni Minawi, who signed a peace deal with the government last May and has joined forces with Sudan’s central government, are increasingly blamed for the recent violence.

Holmes spoke from a camp called Es Sallam, one of three camps near El Fasher that is overspilling with people. Aid workers are currently negotiating space for a fourth camp to meet the incoming flow of refugees.

Holmes said people in the camp were not starving and health conditions seemed decent.

“This shows the enormous humanitarian effort that has been made for three years,” he said, referring to the international aid effort in Darfur, which is the largest in the world with more than $1 billion spent and some 14,000 aid workers in the region.

The governor of north Darfur extended apologies to Holmes on Sunday for his being turned away Saturday when he tried to visit another notorious refugee camp.

Holmes said he accepted the apology but would nonetheless raise the issue with Sudanese officials. He said it illustrated the near-constant problems faced by relief workers trying to deliver aid to Darfur’s population.

Meanwhile in Berlin on Sunday, German and British leaders at an EU summit called for an increase of sanctions against the Sudanese government.

“The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. “We need to get a new resolution in the United Nations which extends the sanctions regime … We need to consider, in my view, a no-fly zone.”