Oil Seals Friendship For China And 'Rogue' Sudan

When President Hu Jintao of China arrives in Sudan today, an isolated regime waging a brutal war in Darfur will offer an effusive welcome.

"We are striving to be the best friend of China in the African continent," said Zahawi Ibrahim Malik, Sudan's information minister, as he announced Mr Hu's latest stop on his tour of Africa.

Khartoum has much to be grateful for. China has become a key player in Sudan's burgeoning oil industry, which poured some £3.2 billion into the country's coffers last year. In 1998, oil revenues were zero.

This windfall gain has greatly strengthened President Omar al-Bashir's grip on power.

Thanks to these revenues, he can pay for his military machine and wage war against rebels in Darfur.

Beijing has invested about £8 billion in Sudanese oil through the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC).

According to CNPC's annual report, Sudan accounts for about half of all its overseas oil assets.

The company says that its exploration teams have found 4.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil in two Sudanese fields.

In total, Sudan exported about 500,000 barrels every day last year. All this travelled through a 900-mile pipeline, built by China, linking the oilfields of Kordofan province with Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Billboards on Khartoum's street corners carry pictures of beaming Chinese oil workers and the slogan: "CNPC – Your close friend and faithful partner."

China's stake in Sudanese oil has made it Mr Bashir's only friend among the leading powers. Beijing is now believed to depend on Sudan for about seven per cent of all its oil imports.

So it has repeatedly protected Sudan in the United Nations Security Council. Shortly after the outbreak of fighting in Darfur in 2004, the UN passed resolution 1564, which threatened Sudan with oil sanctions unless it curbed the notorious, government-sponsored "Janjaweed" militia responsible for much of the killing.

But China immediately announced that it would veto any attempt to impose an oil embargo. From that moment, the resolution effectively became meaningless.

The few independent voices in Sudan have no doubt that China's friendship has fuelled the war.

"The oil money goes on military hardware and on the prosecution of the war in Darfur," said Alfred Taban, the publisher of the Khartoum Monitor newspaper.

"Without the oil, Khartoum's ability to wage war in Darfur would definitely have been limited. It would not have stopped the war, because there are other sources of revenue. But the intensity would have been greatly reduced."

Human rights groups have called repeatedly for an oil embargo on Khartoum. By depriving Sudan of its oil revenues, Mr Bashir's regime could be compelled to halt its military offensives in Darfur, where two million people have fled their homes and about 300,000 have died from violence, starvation or disease.

But China's dependence on Sudan's oil is so great that it will never support oil sanctions. "China has tremendous leverage over Sudan which it hasn't used," said Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.

But the stakes for China are high. Mr Hu knows that his booming economy is causing the demand for oil to rise by perhaps 10 per cent every year. To sustain this boom, the quest for oil has become a central goal of Chinese foreign policy.

America has already snapped up the world's biggest reserves in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which together have about 45 per cent of all the world's oil.

Sudan, by contrast, is effectively closed to western oil firms. America formally banned its companies from investing there and European firms steer clear of the protests that would accompany any involvement with Mr Bashir's regime.

Oil Seals Friendship For France And 'Rogue' Sudan

If the EU truly creates laws against genocide-denial speech, watch Total attempt to silence all discussion of genocide in French media.

why should china be responsible for Darfur?
Have we send troops to "anti-terrorists' in Darfur?
It is Sudanese ruler that should be resonsible to Darfur!
Sudnaese Arabian and Blacks have keep killing and raping eaching other for centuries.

We cooperate with the guys in power in Sudan,because we want to do business there without annoyance.

It does not mean we like Sudanese rulers and hate the people in Darfur.
If the black in Darfur came into powers,we would also be ready cooperate with them.
attention:we get oil,and sudanese get hard cash and industrial products.
it is a fair deal.

as long as our investment ther can be secured and we can buy oil there freely,we don't care who is in power in Sudan.

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