Posted on 06/21/2006 4:54:26 AM PDT by Alama
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir escalated his rejection of the United Nations deploying peacekeepers in Darfur, calling them neo-colonialists and accusing Jewish organizations of pushing for their deployment.
His comments, made while a joint UN and African Union team was in Sudan planning for such a deployment, is likely to increase tension with the UN Security Council and provoke an angry response from US legislators.
A Security Council delegation toured Darfur early this month. The US and Europeans have been pushing for a large UN force to take over peacekeeping in Darfur from the African Union's poorly equipped 7,000 troops, who have been unable to halt the violence in the west Sudanese region.
When journalists pressed al-Bashir on his objection to UN troops in Darfur, he replied: "It is clear that there is a purpose behind the heavy propaganda and media campaigns" for international intervention in Darfur.
"If we return to the last demonstrations in the United States, and the groups that organized the demonstrations, we find that they are all Jewish organizations," al-Bashir said.
The president was referring to the rallies held in New York and Philadelphia earlier this year, which were addressed by figures such as actor George Clooney and former basketball star Manute Bol, a Sudanese.
The comments were al-Bashir's strongest rejection of a UN peacekeeping role in Darfur. At one point he said he himself would lead the "resistance" to such a force.
"This shall never take place," al-Bashir told reporters at a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday. "These are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country."
"They want to colonize Africa, starting with the first sub-Saharan country to gain its independence. If they want to start colonization in Africa, let them chose a different place," he said.
However, Sudan already has 10,000 UN peacekeepers in its south, where they are helping to implement the January 2005 peace agreement that ended more than 20 years of civil war between the north and the south of the country.
Nearly 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in Darfur since members of ethnic African tribes rose in revolt against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003. The government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab militias known as the janjaweed who have been accused of the worst atrocities. But it denies any involvement.
A leading government opponent, Hassan Turabi, has said the government opposes the United Nations in Darfur because the world body has vowed to prosecute all those involved in war crimes.
"They are afraid of the UN's efficiency. The government fears that too many of its allies will end up in an international criminal court," said Turabi, who is believed to be influential with one of the Darfur rebel groups.
The UN team in Sudan is led by the world body's top peacekeeping official, Undersecretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno, who is scheduled to give a press conference at the end of his visit on Thursday.
Jan Pronk, the top UN envoy in Sudan, said in a statement Wednesday that Guehenno and the Security Council delegation had stressed that "the United Nations will not intervene in the country," nor will it deploy troops, without the consent of the Sudanese government.
So the UN once more rejected will again turn to attacking the United States.
What good is a toothless organisation with no courage and people within it who are as bad as those it is trying to subdue. The UN is a paper tiger..
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Insulting the Jooooz, are you? It's time for regime change.
It's true that Jewish groups have been behind much of the impetus. I think we're one community that recognizes a potentially genocidal (if it isn't already) situation when it sees one.
If you stopped murdering and raping people, then the Jewish groups would leave you alone.
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