China asks U.S. to revise draft on Sudan’s Darfur

BEIJING, Sept 14 (Reuters) – China asked the United States on Tuesday to revise its draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting the Foreign Ministry.

The new draft was not in accordance with the theme of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report, it quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan as saying.

“Under the current situation, to exert pressure and threaten to adopt sanctions will serve nothing but make the Darfur issue more complicated,” it quoted Kong as saying.

China hoped the United States could revise the new draft according to consensus suggestions for a proper solution on the Darfur issue, he was quoted as saying.

The United States is expected to distribute later on Tuesday a revised version of its U.N. resolution on Sudan, but retain a threat of sanctions if Khartoum fails to stop atrocities in its Darfur region, diplomats have said.

The draft Washington submitted last week threatened to consider sanctions on Sudan’s oil industry if Khartoum failed to disarm the Arab militia, called Janjaweed, or to cooperate with a deployment of thousands of African Union monitors in Darfur.