U.S. Pressuring Sudan To Allow International Troops

The east African nation is responsible for the deaths of nearly 250,000 people
By the end of last December, 26,000 troops were supposed to descend upon the Darfur region of Sudan to help stanch a half-decade of senseless murder and destruction. But the deadline for the agreement, signed by the government of Sudan, the United Nations and the African Union, has long passed, and the violence and its impact goes unabated. “Given the humanitarian suffering, given the instability and violence that’s going on, its way past time for talk,” said Ambassador Richard Williamson, as President Bush’s special envoy to Sudan, who was appointed at the beginning of the year. “We have to have action including accelerating deployment of African Union-United Nations troops on the ground.” His comments to reporters followed his meeting Wednesday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. During Bush’s first term, the U.S. government took the extraordinary step to characterize Sudan’s actions in western Sudan as genocide, blaming the Arab-controlled government of sanctioning the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads to annihilate the nation’s ethnic African peoples. To day, according to humanitarian agency observers, some 250,000 people have been slaughtered and more than 2 million people driven from their homes over the past five years. Officials from the Sudanese government have held up the deployment of all but 9,000 peacekeepers – 7,500 military personnel and 1,500 police officers – saying that the United Nations reneged on its promise to ensure that the force be composed of African Union troops. Williams said he has met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to request that he allow 1,600 troops from Nepal and Thailand if the soldiers do not arrive until after thousands of African troops arrive first. “He did not reject it,” Williamson said. “We’re going to have some follow up discussions. All we want is results on the ground, so there can be alleviation of humanitarian suffering, so there can be some stability,” he said. “I think we’re wrong to obsess about the helicopters. Our immediate obsession should be to try to get peacekeepers on the ground.”