US to seek other options if Sudan blocks UN peacekeepers

Dec 13, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The U.S. will have to consider “other options” to relieve the suffering in Darfur if the Sudanese government continues to block the dispatch of a U.N. peacekeeping force, the State Department said Wednesday.

There is a growing sense of urgency in Washington over Darfur because of a deteriorating situation facing the region’s displaced throngs and the Dec. 31 expiration date on the mandate for more than 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in the region now.

The U.N. wants to augment the A.U. force with 13,000 U.N. peacekeepers. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir says a U.N. force would amount to neocolonialism in the former British colony. He suggests more African peacekeepers.

While State Department spokesman Sean McCormack made no reference to the possibility of military action, London’s Financial Times newspaper reported Wednesday that the U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair supports creation of a “no-fly zone” over Darfur should the U.N. Security Council agree.

Victims of the violence in the vast western Sudan region have described attacks by Sudan Air Force aircraft in conjunction with raids by government-supported Arab militia, the janjaweed. More than 200,000 African Muslims have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in almost four years of turmoil.

He apparently had in mind the sort of arrangement that U.S. Navy and Air Force warplanes patrolled for years over southern and northern Iraq during the 1990s to prevent former President Saddam Hussein from harassing restive Shiites in the south and autonomous Kurds, mostly Sunni Muslims, in the north.

The Financial Times said other options to protect the Darfurians include a naval blockade along Sudan’s Red Sea coast and targeted air strikes.

Although McCormack wouldn’t discuss options, he said, “The violence has to stop, and the humanitarian situation needs to be addressed. … We have to start thinking of other ideas on how to protect the people.”

U.S. presidential envoy Andrew Natsios discussed the Darfur situation with al-Bashir on Wednesday in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Blair raised the Darfur issue recently with President George W. Bush at the White House. McCormack had no comment on that meeting.

“The president is very concerned about the issue of Darfur,” he said.

(AP)