US sanctions reveal ‘hostile intentions’ – Sudan

May 29, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government said Tuesday that new sanctions imposed by US President George W. Bush over violence in the western Sudanese region of Darfur expose Washington’s “hostile” intentions.

“The American decision highlights the hostile intentions and points to the fact that the United States does not want peace in Darfur,” presidential adviser Mazjub al-Khalifa told reporters.

“While cooperation between the government of Sudan, the African Union and the United Nations is progressing rapidly, the United States always chooses to go against the current, revealing its bad intentions,” he said.

Bush on Tuesday tightened sanctions on Sudan over what the US terms “genocide” in Darfur and pushed for a tough new UN Security Council resolution to punish the government in Khartoum.

Bush said he had directed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a new UN resolution broadening economic sanctions on Sudan’s leaders, expand an arms embargo on Sudan, and bar Sudanese military flights over Darfur.

The stricter sanctions will bar another 31 companies, including oil exporters, from US trade and financial dealings, and take aim at two top Sudanese government officials accused of atrocities there.

“Just as the situation was improving in Darfur, the American government stuns us with their announcement of new sanctions against Sudan,” Khalifa said.

“The United States is isolating itself this way, and depriving its companies (of doing business there) and harming its people,” he said.

He argued that the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called for dialogue and negotiation over Darfur, is proof of “US isolation over this matter.”

Sudan has accepted the first two of a three-phase plan floated last year by then-UN chief Kofi Annan, in which a joint UN-AU force is to take over peacekeeping from 7,000 under-equipped AU troops that have failed to stem four years of bloodshed in Darfur.

The plan should culminate with the deployment of 20,000 international troops, which Khartoum is still studying.

Khalifa insisted his government would not “succumb to pressure, and will preserve the sovereignty of Sudan.”

The four-year conflict in Darfur has left at least 200,000 people dead and forced more than two million people from their homes, according to the United Nations. Sudan disputes those estimates, saying 9,000 people have died.

(AFP)