US vows to push Sudan resolution despite opposition

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 15 (AFP) — The United States said it will push for a vote on its UN resolution on the bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region, and offered strong words in the face of a possible veto from China.

The draft resolution threatens sanctions on Sudan’s oil industry if the government does not rein in the Arab militias behind a spiral of violence in Darfur that has left an estimated 50,000 people dead.

But in a sign of sharp international disagreements over how to cope with the crisis, China has indicated it could use its veto power on the UN Security Council to sink the resolution, diplomats said.

“Anyone who vetoes will have to explain why they did not help protect the people of Darfur,” Richard Grenell, spokesman for US ambassador John Danforth, told AFP on Wednesday.

Grenell said Washington wanted a vote by Friday. Nine votes are needed to pass a council resolution as long as there is no veto from one of the permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

The resolution demands that Sudan disarm and clamp down on the Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, blamed for a brutal campaign of ethnic violence in Sudan’s vast western Darfur region.

It also calls for an expanded presence of African Union monitors in the region and asks the United Nations to establish a commission of enquiry to determine if genocide has occurred.

The government relied on the militias to help put down a rebellion by largely black Africans in the region that started in February 2003.

But the United States has echoed aid and rights groups in saying that attacks on civilians have continued in what UN officials have charged is a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. Washington termed it genocide.

On Wednesday, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail dismissed the proposed resolution as “illogical and unbalanced.”

Meanwhile in Nigeria, one of the two main rebel groups in Darfur which rose up against the government said peace talks there with the government had collapsed and could be suspended for weeks.

The United States has maintained that only the threat of sanctions will get Khartoum to act, and its proposed draft says Sudan has failed to comply with a July council resolution demanding that it stop the violence.

In addition to China, council members Algeria, Pakistan and Russia have expressed opposition to the resolution.

“We don’t like it — I mean both sanctions and specifically mentioning oil,” said Russian ambassador Andrey Denisov, who nevertheless said he wanted to see a final version of the text.