Wikileaks: Brazilian MP supportive of Bashir following trip at Sudan’s expense

July 18, 2011 (WASHINGTON) – A Brazilian parliamentarian who has been supportive of President Omer Hassan al-Bashir traveled to Khartoum at the expense of the Sudanese government, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

The document crafted by the U.S. embassy in Brasilia discussed foreign policy as being am emerging campaign issue in the Brazilian elections between Worker’s Party (PT) and Social Democratic Party (PSDB).

Among those mentioned in the cable was PT deputy Nilson Mourão and also president of the Brazil-Arab Countries Parliamentary Group who “traveled to Sudan in September at [Government of Sudan] GOS expense and returned issuing a spirited defense of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, including a sharp rejection of the international community’s approach to Sudan”.

In August 2009, the Brazilian MP slammed the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Bashir issued the same year describing it as ” inappropriate, unsustainable in law”.

The Sudanese leader faces ten counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide he allegedly masterminded in Darfur.

“If the problem is genocide and war crimes, the ICC should have condemned in the first place, the United States, sent to arrest Bush,” he said.

Brazil has pledged that it will execute the arrest warrant against Bashir should he attempt to visit. Furthermore, then Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from the PT, declined to sit next to the Sudanese president during a lunch banquet in Doha in early 2009.

Mourão claimed that Sudan is targeted because it canceled contracts with American oil companies and instead established a partnership with China.

U.S. companies are prohibited from operating in Sudan because of economic sanctions imposed since 1997 after Washington accused Khartoum’s Islamist government of “supporting terrorism.

Mourão was described iby the U.S. embassy as a hardliner who plays a strong role in PT’s public foreign policy.

However, the cable said that Mourão’s party “went out of its way to tell us [U.S. embassy] that Mourão’s glowing report in support of the Sudanese government represented neither PT nor [Government of Brazil] GOB positions, and that Mourão was told to quiet down”.

(ST)