Sudan: China Takes Credit for Sending Int'l Troops to Darfur

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
April 21, 2007Posted to the web April 21, 2007
Antoaneta BezlovaBeijing

China is taking credit for its role in persuading the Sudanese government to accept an international peacekeeping force to stop the killings in Darfur and is determined to prevent further sanctions on a country in which it has massive investments.
Speaking to the press last week after a special mission to Sudan, assistant foreign minister Zhai Jun said it was due to China's efforts that Khartoum is relenting to international pressure to accept the Annan peace plan.

"We are not in favour of increasing sanctions or expanding sanctions, because there is much hope for resolving this (Darfur) issue," Zhai said.
Until Zhai's trip to Sudan when he met with the country's President and toured refugee camps, Khartoum had repeatedly refused to bow to international pressure to allow U.N. intervention in Darfur. President al-Bashir has said such action would endanger his country's sovereignty and has described the U.N. peacekeeping forces as "neo-colonists".
Beijing's stance continues despite new evidence that the Sudanese government is directly involved in the civil war ravaging the Darfur region. A U.N. report, leaked to the press, has revealed that Khartoum disguised military planes to look like U.N. aircraft and used them to bomb villages in Darfur.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has long maintained that his government has nothing to do with the ongoing civil war in the region, which has taken the lives of more than 200,000 people and uprooted another 2.5 million from their homes.
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when black ethnic African tribes rebelled against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, accusing it of decades of discrimination and marginalisation. Human rights groups and the U.N. say the government responded by arming and unleashing a militia, Janjaweed, which is widely alleged to have destroyed hundreds of villages, murdering the inhabitants and raping the women.
The new evidence of Khartoum's involvement in the atrocities came in a confidential U.N. panel report which was leaked to the press this week. Backed by photographs, the report says that Sudan government had painted military aircraft white -- a colour usually reserved for the U.N. -- and used them to ferry arms to the Janjaweed militia and for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions in Darfur.
China has, however, preferred to focus on what it termed a "positive move towards peace" achieved this week. After months of frustrated diplomatic efforts Sudan finally agreed Monday to a large-scale assistance from the U.N. that would see the deployment of 3,000 military police officers along with six attack helicopters and other aviation to Darfur.
The dispatch represents the second stage of a much-delayed three-stage proposal initiated by the former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan whose ultimate aim was to create a 21,000-member joint African Union-U.N. force to replace the 7,000-member African Union force acting there now.
The Chinese foreign ministry said it believed now was not the "proper time" to discuss sanctions and world powers should seize the diplomatic opportunity and concentrate on installing a U.N. force into the war-torn Darfur region.
"It is time to undertake constructive measures to implement the agreement, instead of talking about new sanctions," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular press briefing in Beijing on Thursday.
Despite Khartoum's demonstration of will to compromise, the U.S. and Britain have threatened stiffer sanctions if Sudan did not act quickly and resolutely to halt the violence.
"The time for promises is over, President Bashir must act. If President Bashir does not meet his obligations, the U.S. will act," President George W. Bush was quoted as saying Wednesday.
Among the measures being considered are sanctions on companies doing business with Sudan, freezing financial assets, arms embargo and creating no-fly zones.
China has cautioned though that new sanctions would only worsen the humanitarian crises there. "It is better not to move in that direction (imposing sanctions)," China's deputy U.N. ambassador Liu Zhenmin said, also Wednesday. "I think in a few weeks, or a few months, the political process will produce some results."
China worries that stiffer sanctions could derail a political process which its diplomats have worked hard to set in pace and for which Beijing is taking credit for.
The Chinese intervention marks a shift from past policy under which Beijing seemed reluctant to use its influence in Sudan. China, a veto-yielding Security Council member, has invested billions of dollars in developing Sudan's oil fields and is one of the country's main commercial partners.
The Bush administration has long urged China to put more pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with the U.N., citing Beijing's large oil purchases, investment and weapons sales as possible tools of leverage. China, however, has preferred to view Sudan as an important source of energy for its booming economy, refusing to take stance on the internal politics of the country.
In recent months though, China's "hands-off politics" approach to Sudan has come under fire by non-governmental organisations and rights activists, which have insisted that by failing to act Beijing has effectively condoned atrocities.
U.S. actress Mia Farrow, a U.N. good-will ambassador, has linked the 2008 Olympic Games, that Beijing is hosting, to the killings in Darfur. In a campaign labelling the Beijing Olympics the "Genocide Olympics", Farrow and other rights groups have tried publicly to shame China into acting on the Darfur issue.
Beijing has defended China's engagement with Sudan by blaming the civil strife and humanitarian crisis in Darfur on poverty. Zhai described Chinese aid and investment in the country as viable solutions to the crisis.
"If the living conditions of the Sudanese people don't improve, they will keep on fighting for the limited natural resources, aggravating the situation," he told reporters.