UN balances diplomacy with urgent need to act
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS, July 31, 2004 (AP) — Some call it ethnic cleansing, some call it genocide. All agree that the killings of thousands of people by Arab militias in Sudan’s Darfur region have produced a major humanitarian crisis.
But diplomacy is diplomacy and the U.N. Security has Council found itself this week balancing Arab sensitivities, concerns of international meddling and national interests with calls to act urgently.
After intense negotiations, the 15-nation council sent a stern warning to Sudan on Friday to disarm and bring to justice pro-government militias accused of widespread atrocities in 30 days or face diplomatic or economic punishment.
But the United States and its co-sponsors had to overcome considerable opposition to get the U.N. resolution adopted and they failed to gain unanimity.
Pakistan and China abstained, saying the Sudanese government needs more time to fulfill a July 3 pledge to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to crack down on the militias, known as the Janjaweed.
“Our desire to solve this problem is no less than any other country on the council but we have our principled stand,” the Chinese deputy U.N. ambassador, Zhang Yishan, said.
The breakthrough came when the United States deleted the volatile word “sanctions” from the final version introduced Thursday, replacing it with a reference to an article of the U.N. charter that threatens punitive economic and diplomatic measures but not armed force.
The United States and other supporters insisted the resolution maintains the threat of sanctions if not the word. But the move secured the support of Russia, Brazil, the Philippines and Angola, who had been wavering, a U.S. diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
“Sanctions is a very mighty, very powerful but very controversial word,” Russian Ambassador Andrei Denisov told reporters. “The approach to imposing or not imposing sanctions must be very very careful.”
The resolution got cautious support from Egypt and the Arab League a day after its adoption.
Sudan also stepped back from its initial rejection of the document, saying on Saturday that it will fulfill its promise to disarm the militias and reiterating a plea for more international assistance.
“We are not happy with the resolution, but we are going to implement it – we have no other option,” Sudan’s ambassador to the African Union, Osman al-Said, told reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. But he warned that the task of stabilizing Darfur, a western province as large as Iraq and with 6 million inhabitants, may be too much for his government.
The U.S. diplomat said resistance to the resolution also came from some countries that had economic and commercial ties with Sudan, which has vast oil reserves.
But it was a hard resolution to vote against as the international community, haunted by memories of inaction in Rwanda a decade ago, steps up condemnation over the killings, rapes and torching of villages by the Janjaweed, or “horsemen” in the local dialect.
The crisis has left an estimated 30,000 people, mostly black African farmers, dead, more than 1 million displaced and 2.2 million left in urgent need of aid. Many more likely to die of hunger and disease in refugee camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad, humanitarian agencies have warned.
On Saturday, France began deploying troops and humanitarian aid to Chad’s border with Darfur.
Long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and African farmers over dwindling water and agricultural land exploded into violence in February 2003 when two African rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government. Both sides in the Darfur conflict are Muslim.