US lawmakers urge UN for action on Darfur
Mar 7, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — A US Democratic congressional delegation led by Nancy Pelosi called on UN chief Kofi Annan to press for a concerted effort to end the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur province.
Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, said she felt it was important to impress on Annan “the sense of urgency” about resolving the Darfur conflict after she visited the region as part of a bipartisan congressional team two weeks ago.
The California lawmaker said she looked forward to working in a bipartisan way with US President George W. Bush and the United Nations “to make a difference as soon as possible”.
“In the United States, whether you are talking about on college campuses, high school campuses, in state legislatures, in corporate headquarters, churches across the country, the issue of Darfur challenges the conscience of our country and indeed of the world,” Pelosi said. “The violence must stop, the negotiations must begin and it must happen soon.”
Her House colleague from New Jersey, Donald Payne, called on “the world powers to urge the government of Sudan to finally start to be serious about the negotiations.”
“We certainly in principle support a strengthening of the AU’s (African Union’s) mandate to integrate UN forces with the AU, hoping that is a decision that they will make” at a meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council Friday, he added.
The council is to meet in Addis Ababa Friday to discuss proposals to transfer responsibility for the Darfur force to the United Nations.
California Congresswoman Barbara Lee spoke of the growing divestment drive across the United States targeting the Khartoum government.
“We see this taking hold because we know and recognize we have to do something more in terms of an economic squeeze on the Khartoum government, and I think that this movement is really speaking to the conscience of America and is the next phase of what we have to do,” she said.
The UN Security Council last month approved contingency planning for UN peacekeepers to take over from the AU force.
But, despite strong pressure from Western governments, Khartoum has so far remained hostile to the deployment of UN troops there.
The 7,000-strong AU force, which was deployed in 2004, has been suffering from poor funding and inadequate resources to contain the escalating bloodshed in Sudan’s western region.
The war in Darfur broke out in February 2003, when black ethnic groups launched a rebellion against Khartoum and were brutally put down by the Arab Islamist regime of President Omar al-Beshir.
Nearly 300,000 people have died and 2.4 million made refugees in the civil war that has enveloped the western Sudan province over the past three years.
(ST/AFP)