US reviews stalled policy on Darfur crisis
Oct 31, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — President George W. Bush announced a review of US policy on the Darfur crisis as Sudan persists in refusing the deployment of UN peacekeepers to halt catastrophic violence in the region.
The United States was a principal backer of a United Nations resolution in August demanding the deployment of some 20,000 UN peacekeepers to Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million left homeless during three years of civil war.
But the government of President Omar al-Beshir has rejected the peacekeepers and rebuffed a recent initiative to break the deadlock by Bush’s personal envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios.
Meeting with Natsios at the White House Tuesday, Bush said the diplomat had delivered a “grim report” about the humanitarian situation in Darfur, where government-armed Arab militia have been blamed for much of the violence against civilians.
“The United States is going to work with the international community to come up with a single plan on how to address this issue and save lives,” Bush said.
He provided few details, other than to insist that the plan would include deployment of a “credible and effective international force to go into Darfur to save lives”.
“The government of Sudan must understand that we’re serious,” he said.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on August 31 calling for the deployment of 20,000 peacekeepers to replace an under-funded African Union (AU) contingent of 7,000 that has failed to end violence which the US has called genocide.
The conflict began in 2003 with rebellion by Darfur’s mainly black African population seeking autonomy from the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
The government responded by arming Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, who have destroyed hundreds of villages in a scorched-earth policy.
Beshir’s regime has consistently rejected the deployment of UN forces, charging that the plan was part of a US-engineered plot to invade his country and plunder its resources.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that following up on Natsios’s mission to Khartoum, the Bush administration was mulling “what new or different policy proposals we might make” to end the deadlock.
He declined to provide details, but said discussions were going on both within the US administration, and with Washington’s international partners, including Arab states with influence in Khartoum.
“What all that does is underscore the fact that we want to try to get something done on this issue,” he said. “There’s too much suffering going on there.”
(AFP)