UK lawmakers urge businessmen to stop investing in Sudan

By Conal Walsh

Oct 1, 2006 (LONDON) — MPs from the influential House of Commons foreign affairs committee are urging British businesses with investments in Sudan to withdraw from the war-torn African country.
The call for disinvestment is aimed at companies including Shell, Rolls-Royce and British Airways. It is intended to put pressure on the government in Khartoum, which is accused of supporting a civil war that has led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Darfur.

Tony Blair has condemned Khartoum’s refusal to allow a peacekeeping force into the area to prevent escalating violence, but has stopped short of imposing economic sanctions. This weekend, however, MPs on the foreign affairs committee called on British companies to consider taking the lead by pulling out of Sudan.

‘The situation is so unacceptable that there would be merit in British companies disinvesting,’ said Richard Younger-Ross, a member of the committee. ‘There has to be a point where companies say: “You are not the sort of people we can do business with.” We can’t stand by and watch genocide.’

Fabian Hamilton, another MP on the committee, cited the success of boycotts against apartheid-era South Africa and said: ‘If we can be sure that disinvestment would put pressure on those in power rather than hurt ordinary Sudanese people, we should do it.’

Mike Gapes, the MP who chairs the committee, added that disinvestment ‘is something we should be looking at’.

British exports to Sudan were worth £140m last year -up more than 50 per cent on the figure for 2004. Shell, one of a few western companies involved in Sudan’s fledgling oil industry, declined to comment on the call for disinvestment.

The appeal echoes a celebrity-backed campaign in America, endorsed by several state governments, to persuade US companies to pull out of Sudan.

(The Observer)