While searching Reuters‘ AlertNet for news and assistance links for Indonesia’s devastating earthquake which spread tsunami disaster from India to Malaysia and is producing sea surges in East Africa, I happened to see this article about Bush’s signing of a bill, on Dec. 23rd, calling for sanctions amd military assistance in the Sudan.
The so-called “Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act of 2004,” which is mostly nonbinding, calls for the United States to assist in the deployment of additional African Union forces to the region.
It says Bush should “encourage” U.N. members to stop importing oil from Sudan.
It also says Bush should impose targeted sanctions, including a ban on travel and the freezing of assets, on government and military officials, as well as businesses controlled by the government or the National Congress Party.
The bill says Bush should encourage U.N. members to take similar actions.
It’s being reported that the Sudanese gov’t and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army have “pledged to finalize an agreement to end Africa’s longest-running war by Dec. 31“, but this doesn’t cover the Darfur region.
The peace talks in Kenya do not cover a separate conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where rebels took up arms last year. That conflict has created what the United Nations calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Southern rebels began fighting in 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic sharia law on the mainly animist and Christian south. Oil, religion and ideology have complicated the war that has driven 4 million people from their homes.
Both parties have signed key accords over the past 15 months on security arrangements, power-sharing, wealth-sharing and the status of three disputed areas during a six-year interim period.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere, on a visit to Khartoum earlier this month, had also expressed optimism over a deal to end the fighting that has killed 2 million Sudanese.
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) released a statement on the same day that Bush signed the “Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act of 2004.” The rebel group is refusing “to return to African Union-sponsored peace talks and rejected the pan-African body as lead mediator to end the 22-month-old conflict.“
According to Reuters and the leader of JEM, Khalil Ibrahim:
A U.S. State Department spokesman said: “Our understanding from the JEM that were represented at Abuja was that they are coming back to another round in January. That continues to be our understanding.”
But Ibrahim insisted the talks be headed by the United Nations. “The government has defeated the AU and the AU don’t have any guarantees for any future agreement or political solution,” he said.
He said the AU could participate as observers in talks, and in a peacekeeping mission on the ground, but the JEM would not accept anything less than U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.
“We are asking to replace the AU with international troops — U.N. peacekeepers,” he added.
You can read more about JEM here, which was formed by African Muslims from Darfur following the purging of supporters of National Islamic Front of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi from gov’t, as payback for Turabi’s introduction of a bill into the general assembly calling for a reduction in the powers of President Omar al-Bashir.
The question seems to be, will all of this result in the replacing of one dictator with another, and how will a lasting peace ever be achieved if this occurs?