Beijing bends a little on
Darfur By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China is taking credit for its
role in persuading the Sudanese government to
accept an international peacekeeping force to stop
the killings in Darfur and is determined to
prevent further sanctions on a country in which it
has massive investments.
Speaking to the
press recently after a special mission to Sudan,
Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun said it was
because of China's efforts that Khartoum is
relenting to international pressure
to
accept the peace plan backed by former United
Nations secretary general Kofi Annan.
"We
are not in favor of increasing sanctions or
expanding sanctions, because there is much hope
for resolving this [Darfur] issue," Zhai said.
Until Zhai's trip to Sudan when he met
with the country's president and toured refugee
camps, Khartoum had repeatedly refused to bow to
international pressure to allow UN intervention in
Darfur. President Omer Hassan al-Bashir has said
such action would endanger his country's
sovereignty and has described the UN peacekeeping
forces as "neo-colonists".
Beijing's
stance continues despite new evidence that the
Sudanese government is directly involved in the
civil war ravaging the Darfur region. A UN report,
leaked to the press, has revealed that Khartoum
disguised military planes to look like UN aircraft
and used them to bomb villages in Darfur.
Bashir has long maintained that his
government has nothing to do with the ongoing
civil war in the region, which has taken the lives
of more than 200,000 people and uprooted another
2.5 million from their homes.
The Darfur
conflict began in 2003 when black ethnic-African
tribes rebelled against the Arab-dominated
government in Khartoum, accusing it of decades of
discrimination and marginalization. Human-rights
groups and the UN say the government responded by
arming and unleashing a militia called the
Janjaweed, which is widely alleged to have
destroyed hundreds of villages, murdering the
inhabitants and raping the women.
The new
evidence of Khartoum's involvement in the
atrocities came in a confidential UN panel report
that was leaked to the press. Backed by
photographs, the report says the Sudanese
government painted military aircraft white - a
color usually reserved for the UN - and used them
to ferry arms to the Janjaweed militia and for
reconnaissance flights and bombing missions in
Darfur.
China has, however, preferred to
focus on what it terms a "positive move toward
peace". After months of frustrated diplomatic
efforts, Sudan finally agreed early last week to a
large-scale assistance from the UN that would see
the deployment of 3,000 military police officers
along with six attack helicopters and other
aviation to Darfur.
The dispatch
represents the second stage of a much-delayed
three-stage proposal initiated by Annan, whose
ultimate aim was to create a 21,000-member joint
African Union-UN force to replace the 7,000-member
African Union force acting there now.
The
Chinese Foreign Ministry said it believed now was
not the "proper time" to discuss sanctions, and
world powers should seize the diplomatic
opportunity and concentrate on installing a UN
force into the war-torn Darfur region.
"It
is time to undertake constructive measures to
implement the agreement, instead of talking about
new sanctions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu
Jianchao told a regular press briefing in Beijing.
Despite Khartoum's demonstration of a will
to compromise, the US and Britain have threatened
stiffer sanctions if Sudan does not act quickly
and resolutely to halt the violence.
"The
time for promises is over, President Bashir must
act. If President Bashir does not meet his
obligations, the US will act," US President George
W Bush was quoted as saying last week.
Among the measures being considered are
sanctions on companies doing business with Sudan,
freezing financial assets, an arms embargo and
creating no-fly zones.
China has
cautioned, though, that new sanctions would only
worsen the humanitarian crises there. "It is
better not to move in that direction" (imposing
sanctions), China's deputy UN ambassador Liu
Zhenmin said last Wednesday. "I think in a few
weeks, or a few months, the political process will
produce some results."
China worries that
stiffer sanctions could derail a political process
that its diplomats have worked hard to set in
place and for which Beijing is taking credit.
The Chinese intervention marks a shift
from a policy under which Beijing seemed reluctant
to use its influence in Sudan. China, a
veto-yielding UN Security Council member, has
invested billions of dollars in developing Sudan's
oilfields and is one of the country's main
commercial partners.
The Bush
administration has long urged China to put more
pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate
with the UN, citing Beijing's large oil purchases,
investment and weapons sales as possible tools of
leverage.
China, however, has preferred to
view Sudan as an important source of energy for
its booming economy, refusing to take stance on
the internal politics of the country.
In
recent months, though, China's "hands-off
politics" approach to Sudan has come under fire by
non-governmental organizations and rights
activists, which have insisted that by failing to
act Beijing has in effect condoned atrocities.
American actress Mia Farrow, a UN goodwill
ambassador, has linked the 2008 Summer Olympic
Games that Beijing is hosting to the killings in
Darfur. In a campaign labeling the Beijing
Olympics the "Genocide Olympics", Farrow and other
rights groups have tried publicly to shame China
into acting on the Darfur issue.
Beijing
has defended China's engagement with Sudan by
blaming the civil strife and humanitarian crisis
in Darfur on poverty. Zhai described Chinese aid
and investment in the country as viable solutions
to the crisis.
"If the living conditions
of the Sudanese people don't improve, they will
keep on fighting for the limited natural
resources, aggravating the situation," he told
reporters.
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