Rice warns Sudan of relations with US

Sept 11, 2006 (HALIFAX, Nova Scotia) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she told Sudan on Monday there is no chance of improved relations with the United States if it flouts the world’s demand for U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

Rice gave reporters a brief account of her morning meeting in Washington with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol. She was visiting Canada to thank that ally for its generosity in helping stranded American air passengers during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I won’t say that we made progress, but I will say that I delivered the strongest possible message in the strongest possible terms to the Sudanese government that any hope for bettering relations between the United States and Sudan rests on Sudan’s cooperation with the United Nations Security Council resolution,” she said.

In August, the U.N. passed a resolution that would give the world body authority over peacekeepers in the Western Sudanese province of Darfur and is meant to give more power and funding to a force, now run by the African Union, that has been unable to stop the humanitarian catastrophe there. The violence has killed more than 200,000 people and continues to worsen.

Rice said Akol carried a letter to President Bush, which she had not seen. He also “brought hope for better relations between the United States and Sudan, and I told him in no uncertain terms that wasn’t on the agenda unless Sudan acted responsibly,” she said.

The Bush administration has had strained relations with Sudan over the deaths and displacement of villagers in Darfur. Rice found herself in the middle of a diplomatic incident when she visited the Sudanese capital of Khartoum last summer. She asked for and demanded an apology from the Sudanese government after security agents for President Omar al-Bashir treated members of Rice’s traveling party, including reporters, roughly.

Also pressuring the Sudanese government, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Monday calling for targeted sanctions against those responsible for atrocities in Darfur.

The bill by Indiana Republican Richard Lugar calls for sanctions against people determined by the president to be “complicit in, or responsible for, acts of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity in Darfur.”

(AP/ST)