Kerry balks at sending troops to Sudan if needed in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Oct 8, 2004 (AP) — Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry says he would not send U.S. forces to stop the genocide in Sudan if they continued to be needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I’d do everything possible,” he said in a taped interview broadcast Thursday night on Black Entertainment Television, citing logistical support and money to help the African Union intervene in the Sudanese crisis.

Asked whether he’d send troops, Kerry said the United States would “have to be in a position in Iraq and Afghanistan” to allow that to happen. He said his options as president would be limited because President Bush has overextended U.S. forces.

“Our flexibility is less than it was,” he said. “Our moral leadership is not what it ought to be.”

More than 50,000 people have been killed and 1.4 million driven from their homes since two rebel movements took up arms in February 2003 against government installations. The United Nations says the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Sudan .

Kerry recalled former President Bill Clinton’s regret about not doing more to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when at least 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed.

“I don’t want to be a country that allows a second genocide in a decade to take place,” Kerry said.

“I would try to provide all of the logistical support, all of the funding and leadership necessary to help the African Union to be able to step in if necessary and feasible.”