US Senator Corzine plans trip to Sudan and Israel

TRENTON, N.J., Aug 28, 2004 (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine is scheduled to leave Sunday for a trip he hopes will take him to Sudan, where ethnic violence in the Darfur region has resulted in thousands of deaths and the displacement of 1.4 million people.

Corzine, D-N.J., does not yet know if yet if his group will get visas to enter the country where leaders have until Aug. 30 to comply with a United Nations resolution to improve what U.N. officials called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The senator said there was a need for international observation to make sure the Sudanese government was taking steps to meet the deadline set by the United Nations.

“They are not granting visas to my group, which leads me to believe they are not fulfilling their commitment,” Corzine said Friday.

If Corzine does not get into Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, he will visit refugees from Darfur in Chad on Tuesday. He is also scheduled to meet Wednesday in Ethiopia with representatives from the African Union about the violent crisis Corzine called genocide.

He said the Bush administration was not doing enough to address the problem.

“The administration is taking some, but not adequate, steps to deal with this,” he said.

The senator is also scheduled to travel from Africa to Israel for three days next week. Corzine said he would meet Israeli leaders and Palestinian officials to address the violence in that region.