Activists ask Bush to do more to end Darfur crisis

Aug 9, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The Bush administration voiced concern on Wednesday over increasing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and sought to counter criticism at home that Washington was not doing enough to stop the carnage.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said aid workers and others were coming under increasing attack in Sudan’s western Darfur region and he repeated U.S. dismay that a U.N.-led peacekeeping force was still not in place.

“People have lost their lives and that’s concerning,” McCormack said.

“The ultimate solution is a political solution. But in terms of trying to reduce the levels of large-scale violence, you want to have that blue-helmeted (U.N.) force get in there, built on the AU (African Union) force that is there,” he said.

Under-equipped and poorly funded African Union troops have been struggling to keep the peace in Darfur, a region about the size of France.

Sudan’s government has refused to allow a U.N. force into Darfur despite calls by the African Union for such a turnover to take place on October 1. Khartoum has appointed a commission to look into a U.N. force going to Darfur.

“That date’s (October 1) coming up on us really fast,” McCormack said. “We support the AU in that and we’re pushing hard at the U.N. and elsewhere to try and make that happen.”

Activists said Washington’s attention was being diverted by crises in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere and it needed to devote more time to ending what the Bush administration itself has labeled genocide in Darfur.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed after more than three years of rape, murder and looting in Darfur where aid workers say it is becoming more dangerous by the day. Eight humanitarian workers were killed in July.

The Save Darfur Coalition, consisting of about 170 religious, human rights and other groups, put an advertisement in the Waco Tribune-Herald, a newspaper near President George W. Bush’s Texas vacation home, urging him to push for the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force and to appoint a special envoy for Darfur.

The coalition also wrote to Bush, who is on vacation at his ranch in Texas, asking him to “re-engage” in Darfur. The coalition also is planning a rally on Darfur in New York on September 17 to coincide with the U.N. General Assembly.

McCormack strongly rejected criticism the Bush administration was no longer focused on Darfur and said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spoken recently to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the issue.

In addition, he said the State Department was pushing hard for Sudan to be the next item on the agenda at the U.N. Security Council, which is currently absorbed by the crisis in Lebanon.

“It is something that we want to put on the table up in the Security Council and get action on,” he said.

(Reuters)