Posted on 03/30/2005 6:05:37 PM PST by Pharmboy
LONDON (AP) - The death toll in Darfur has been underestimated and is likely to be near 300,000, British lawmakers said Wednesday, calling the international response to the human tragedy "scandalously ineffective." At the United Nations, France delayed a vote on a resolution that would authorize the prosecution of Sudanese war crimes suspects by the International Criminal Court in hopes of averting a U.S. veto.
While British members of Parliament dramatically raised the estimated death toll, an official in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government said it remains unknown. The Blair government said Britain and other nations are doing all they can to support the African Union, which has 3,000 soldiers and cease-fire monitors in Sudan's western region.
"The honest truth" is that nobody knows the real death toll in the more than two-year conflict, Hilary Benn, the government's international development secretary, said on Channel 4 television.
Conflict has engulfed Darfur since February 2003, when two non-Arab rebel groups took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for the region's African tribes.
Sudan's Arab government is accused of responding by backing Janjaweed militiamen who have carried out rapes and killings against Sudanese of African origin. The government denies backing the Janjaweed.
Earlier this month, the United Nations estimated that since October 2003, about 180,000 people had died as a result of the upheaval, with about 2 million people displaced.
U.N. officials said that while the March estimate included some deaths due to violence, most were because of disease and starvation.
The French delay of the vote on the resolution putting those allegedly responsible for the killing on trial at the international court was a bow the reality of a potential American veto.
The United States faces a dilemma because it wants the perpetrators of atrocities in Sudan's western Darfur region brought to justice but it vehemently opposes the International Criminal Court on grounds that Americans could face politically motivated or frivolous prosecutions.
France agreed to postpone a vote until Thursday after the United States said it wanted to amend the draft resolution to ensure that no Americans could be handed over to the court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, U.N. diplomats said.
The United States came up with amendments late Thursday but the diplomats said they weren't acceptable to the nine council members that are parties to the court, including close U.S. ally Britain. In response, France was drafting new amendments which were to be shared with the court's supporters overnight and discussed with the Americans on Thursday, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 15 Security Council nations have been deadlocked for weeks on the issue of holding people accountable in Sudan, and the court's supporters are now demanding a vote on the French resolution.
The French draft introduced last week would refer Darfur cases since July 1, 2002 to the International Criminal Court. That was the recommendation of a U.N. panel that had found crimes against humanity - but not genocide - occurred in the vast western region.
In Britain's House of Commons, a report by the International Development said a World Health Organization estimate that 70,000 people had died from indirect effects of disease and hunger in the Darfur region was "a gross underestimate."
The report, finished before the United Nations released its revised estimate of 180,000, said the total number of dead is likely to be "somewhere around 300,000."
The document accused the international community of a "scandalously ineffective response" to the situation in Darfur and said governments across the world were guilty of failing to deal with the crisis.
The report said early warnings about the emerging crisis were ignored, humanitarian agencies were slow to respond and the United Nations suffered from an "avoidable leadership vacuum" in Sudan at a critical time.
It also criticized the U.N. Security Council as "divided, weak and ineffective," saying it had been driven by member states' interests in oil and exporting arms.
"One of the tragedies about Darfur is that for the whole of the early part of this disaster the international community seemed to turn its eyes away," committee chairman Tony Baldry told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
The report also recommended referring the Darfur crisis to the International Criminal Court and introducing targeted sanctions and an extension of the arms embargo to cover the Sudanese government.
On Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council voted to strengthen its arms embargo on Darfur to include the government and ordered an asset freeze and travel ban on those who defy peace efforts in the conflict-wracked area.
The Sudanese government on Wednesday criticized that action, saying the new resolution would undermine peace efforts in the area.
The resolution "will also create insecurity in Darfur as it imposes restrictions on the movement of the army and its logistics ... at a time (when) it is expected to provide security and fight rebels, outlaws, and the Janjaweed" militia, Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said in Khartoum.
They never had a conniption over the 600 Kuwait POW's Saddam executed either. He should be swinging from the gallows just for that.
Something to point out IRT UN troops raping civilians, the UN is claiming it has no justice system to discipline them.
Excellent post.
They want us to do the fighting while they look down their noses at us and make up the rules of engagement. It's been a long time since we had a leader that didn't buy into this rigged game. The situation needs to be explained better to the average American who has been conned into thinking of the UN and Affiliates as some kind of benevolent organization.
Thanks for the link and all that work. Now I know where to go for the info.
Either ship in arms so the southerners can defend themselves, plus a bunch of Special Forces trainers, or get out. Nothing else will be effective
Where is Jesse Jackson?
I forget what the concept was called, but in some BS international relations course that I took in college, taught by some Marxist idiot, the idea was discussed of kind of a sharing of the burden for military action when several countries have an interest in the outcome.
When we are the dominant and benevolent nation, others expect us to do all of the heavy lifting, spending and sacrifice, while the other nations remain on the sidelines and enjoy the fruits of our labor. The problem is, we're pre-occupied with Iraq, so now the leeches are beside themselves, wondering who is going to fix this Africa thing - assuming that anyone even cares.
This is a clear illustration of the laziness, cowardliness, and disorganization of the rest of the western world and the blatant self-interest of the Asian world. Nobody who can do anything about Africa cares, and they are trying to figure out how to blame it on us, so that they won't look like the bad guys.
One thing that surprises me is that Kofi, as a black African, seems to care not a whit.
Class and position, not race, are as important for him with regard to his views of other people of the same race as they are for our politicians here.
Evidently. Pity that people must get raped or die for this posturing...
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