Sanctions threat shows contempt for the UN – Sudan

April 19, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan on Thursday said that threats of sanctions by London and Washington were a sign of “contempt” for the United Nations which had just praised Khartoum’s acceptance of UN troops in Darfur.

“The calls by the United Sates and Britain for sanctions… show real contempt for the United Nations and regional organisations,” foreign ministry spokesman Ali Sadeq was quoted by the official SUNA agency as saying.

He said he hoped other countries would not follow in the two Western powers’ footsteps, stressing that Khartoum had “honoured its engagements towards the international community with regards to finding a solution in Darfur.”

Sadeq dismissed comments by US President George W. Bush in which he accused Sudan of not doing enough to resolve the problem in the war-torn western Sudanese region.

Khartoum on Monday accepted the second phase of a UN plan to bring stability to Darfur that will add 3,000 UN troops to an under-manned African Union force there.

Britain and the United States said they would begin talks in the Security Council on Thursday on a new Sudan sanctions draft, but veto-wielders China and Russia, as well as South Africa, immediately shot down the plan.

Calling the violence plaguing Darfur “genocide” in a speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, Bush warned Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir that Khartoum faced tougher US sanctions or other punishment if he abandoned his commitments.

A three-phase plan floated last year by former UN chief Kofi Annan is supposed to culminate with the deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster the embattled African force in Darfur, a region the size of France.

At least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million driven from their homes, according to the United Nations. Khartoum disputes those figures, but some sources say the death toll is much higher.

(AFP)