Genocide in Sudan, State to Say

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A State Department report expected at the end of the month says preliminary interviews with Sudanese refugees confirm reports by rights groups that say clear acts of genocide are taking place.


The report, based on 200 interviews of Darfuris in neighboring Chad, is circulating in the State Department. In Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday, the Sudanese government rejected a proposal to send 3,000 African troops to restore peace to the western province, which has been racked with violence for over one and a half years.


A deadline of August 29 has been set for Sudan to comply with demands made nearly a month ago by the U.N. Security Council to arrest leaders of the Janjaweed militia, which Washington and the U.N. have said received substantive training and direction from the Sudanese government. The U.N. also demanded last month that Khartoum restore the security situation in its Darfur province to allow the efficient delivery of food and medicine. Sudanese officials have said they have arrested 200 Janjaweed leaders, but American diplomatic sources say they are doubtful about that number.


In July, the State Department had hoped the Sudanese would take advantage of a clause in the resolution to invite a peacekeeping mission, preferably one fielded by the African Union, to Darfur, expanding the mission of the current cadre of soldiers there, who are only empowered to monitor but not enforce a tattered cease-fire.


Sudan’s chief negotiator in talks yesterday with rebels, however, appeared to give what Washington hopes is not its final answer. “I don’t think there is a need for this,” Mazjoub al-Khalif said before the talks began in Nigeria. In those talks, both sides claimed they reached an agreement to return more than 1.5 million Darfuris made homeless by Janjaweed raiders.


The talks in Nigeria ended as the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, prepared for intensive negotiations in Khartoum. Speaking to reporters before leaving yesterday, Mr. Straw promised to press Sudan’s leaders on the grave humanitarian situation in Darfur.


“I will impress on them the need to make full progress in implementing the obligations they have accepted under the U.N. Security Council resolution,” Mr. Straw said.


A senior American official yesterday told the Sun that so far members of the Security Council are unwilling to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.


“We’ve gone to them and asked them to come up with a positive alternative,” the source added. The alternative will be the beginning of a process of asking for a possible U.N. mission to Sudan to keep the peace, the source said.


The preliminary results from the State Department’s field work with Darfuri refugees may assist their diplomacy. According to two American officials familiar with the report, it confirms earlier reports that “acts of genocide” have taken place. But these officials also point out that the interviews from the field do not prove that it was the intent of President el-Bashir’s government to conduct a policy of genocide. This question of intent is crucial to invoking the provisions of the U.N. convention on the prevention of genocide, which requires vague action to stop it. In June, Congress passed resolutions declaring the situation in Darfur a genocide. That word has also been invoked by Human Rights Watch after its researchers published Sudanese government papers the organization claims proves that intent.


The London Telegraph yesterday published an interview with Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal where he acknowledged that he had some coordination with the government. Mr. Hilal, who is the most senior of seven Janjaweed leaders accused by the State Department of war crimes told the paper, “I was appointed by the government to organize people to defend their lands but legally, not illegally. They were defending themselves against the mutineers.”


The 200 interviews cited in the report were conducted through a contract with the American Bar Association and the Coalition for International Justice. A State Department official told the Sun yesterday that the preliminary report of the interviews was being reviewed by the Office of General Counsel to determine whether or not there is evidence from these interviews to prosecute individuals for war crimes.


On July 20, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said as the interviews come in, “We’ll be reviewing it from a legal point of view if at some point – to see if at some point that evidence constitutes evidence of genocide.”


A former Africa director for the National Security Council under President Clinton, John Prendergast, said that the results from the first State Department interviews were to be expected.


“I predict the report will say the Janjaweed have committed acts of genocide but we have no information or clarity of intent and we cannot make a legal determination,” he said. “Anyone could have told the State Department this two months ago. But it is important that they have started the process of preparing for some measure of future accountability by virtue of the construction of dossiers on particular war crimes that have been committed.”


Mr. Prendergast said he hopes the State Department will punish individual members of the Sudanese government if they fail to meet the terms of July’s Security Council resolution, perhaps by freezing their assets. In an interview yesterday, he said that if the United Nations was unwilling to go along with these measures, he would favor a “coalition of the willing” to freeze the accounts and businesses of senior Sudanese leaders.


“We’ve watched 16 months of an ethnic cleansing campaign with no measure introduced against the Sudan government or its officials,” Mr. Prendergast said. “They have learned well that they can do anything including up to committing acts of genocide. The paradigm has been thus far to threaten and provide a deadline and say if you don’t do ‘x,’ we will do ‘y.’ We never do ‘y.’ This time we should do ‘y’ immediately and say if you do ‘x’ we will remove ‘y.'”


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