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06/30/2004 Archived Entry: "U.S. Disappointed on Sudanese Attitude to Darfur"

Posted by steve @ 03:40 PM EST [Link]

NO PROGRESS OVER DARFUR: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is in Darfur today, scene of a genocidal campaign against the residence there and not surprisingly the Sudanese government isn't being much help resolving the situation.

Powell, on the second day of a visit to Sudan, arrived in Darfur Wednesday for a first-hand look at some of the million people displaced by marauding Arab militias in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

He has threatened unspecified U.N. Security Council action if Khartoum does not crack down on the militias, known locally as the Janjaweed, and streamline relief work in the region.

But a senior U.S. official said that in Powell's initial talks the Sudanese did not realize the gravity of the crisis.

"They are in a state of denial. They are in a state of avoidance. They are trying to obfuscate and avoid any consequences," said the official, who asked not to be named.

They aren't just denying the genocide, they're complicit in it. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Sudanese government sent the military into the region to warn refugees not to complain about any of the killings that have been going on. Seems to me that it's more than a "state of avoidance."

Read on. You can also read an editorial about Darfur that I wrote earlier this month.