Respect Sudan, don’t impose sanctions -China
April 13, 2007 (BEIJING) – The world is not giving enough respect to Sudan in trying to deal with the situation in strife-torn Darfur and sanctions are not the solution, an official Chinese state newspaper said in an editorial on Friday.
“Harsh demands have been made of Sudan, but little respect has been shown for the country — one of the largest on the African continent,” the China Daily said.
“As a sovereign nation, Sudan, which learned bitter lessons during the colonial years, aspires to territorial integrity, national unity, ethnic reconciliation and regional peace and stability,” it said.
“Pressure to force the government of Sudan to abandon its rights and the threat to impose sanctions will only aggravate problems,” said the newspaper, one of the Chinese government’s English-language mouthpieces.
China this week urged Sudan in unusually strong terms to show more flexibility on a peace plan for its devastated Darfur region, but said the international community would get nowhere by dictating terms to Khartoum.
China, which buys much of Sudan’s oil and wields veto power on the U.N. Security Council, has been criticised in the West for not using its leverage to force Khartoum to act to curb violence in Darfur, where ethnic tensions erupted into a revolt in 2003.
“There has been a lot of talk about sanctions, which ignores the fact that the root cause of clashes in Darfur is extreme poverty. This can only be addressed through continuous economic development in a stable and peaceful environment,” the paper said.
“China has taken into consideration all the concerns and worked with perseverance. It has been playing a critical and constructive role in pushing for concrete actions to secure peace and stability in the Darfur region,” it added.
Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun last week met Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as well as Foreign Ministry officials and visited refugee camps in Darfur — a rare step for a Chinese official.
But while insisting its role in Sudan is constructive, China has offered Khartoum increased military cooperation. Last week it played host to its Joint Chief of Staff in Beijing.
Still, China next week is playing host to Chad’s foreign minister. Sudan has accused Chad’s army of launching an attack on Monday that killed 17 of its soldiers.
Chad denied any such deliberate assault but said its forces had clashed with Sudanese troops after crossing the border to pursue Sudanese-backed rebels it accused of launching raids.
(Reuters)