Darfur sanctions needed after diplomacy fails: ICG
Oct 12, 2006 (BRUSSELS) — Diplomacy over Darfur has failed and the international community must now consider sanctions against Sudan to pressure it into accepting U.N. peacekeepers, an influential thinktank said on Thursday.
“Patient diplomacy and trust in Khartoum’s good faith has been a patent failure,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report published on Thursday.
“The international community has little choice but to pursue an action plan based primarily on economic, legal and more limited military measures.”
Sudan has resisted international pressure to allow about 20,000 U.N. troops to replace an ill-equipped African Union peace-keeping force of 7,000 in Darfur.
Some 200,000 people have been killed and up to 2.5 million have been displaced by the three-year-old conflict. Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has compared the U.N. force to a Western invasion and an attempt to recolonize Sudan.
“…It may be possible to persuade the NCP (Sudan’s dominant National Congress Party) to alter its policies and consent to the U.N. mission in Darfur by moving now to targeted sanctions against regime leaders and their business interests,” the ICG said.
Sanctions should target Sudan’s important oil sector, and include asset freezes and travel bans for 17 individuals named in a confidential U.N. report, the thinktank said.
It called for the start of preparations to send United Nations troops into Darfur even without Khartoum’s consent, to ensure a rapid deployment if the humanitarian situation deteriorated further.
The international’s community failure to apply effective diplomatic and economic pressure was to blame for the deadlock, it said. “Every unfulfilled threat increases the NCP’s confidence it can act with impunity.”
Human rights groups, some diplomats and the U.N. envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, have suggested the international community should focus its efforts on prolonging and beefing up the African Union force.
But ICG said that was “too little too late, given the way the security, human rights and humanitarian situation have steadily deteriorated.”
(Reuters)