U.S. Cedes to U.N. Demand to Delay Sudan Sanctions
April 11, 2007
New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-sudan-usa-sanctions.html

The United States has delayed for several weeks imposing new sanctions against Sudan over its handling of Darfur to give the United Nations more time to negotiate with Khartoum, said the U.S. special envoy to Sudan on Wednesday.
Special envoy Andrew Natsios told lawmakers that U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon had asked the United States at the end of last month to wait for two to four weeks to enable him to negotiate a U.N./African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur, which Sudan has so far refused.
``As a courtesy to the (U.N.) Secretary General, we delayed,'' Natsios told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ''I am going to give him the four weeks,'' he added.
Britain, which has been preparing a new resolution in the U.N. Security Council against Sudan, was also asked to wait a few weeks, the envoy said.
The United States was poised at the end of last month to impose stricter sanctions as a way to pressure Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to agree to allow the peacekeeping force into Darfur.
In addition, a U.S. congressional delegation was visiting Sudan at the time and also requested a hold-off on sanctions, said Natsios.
Several senators criticized the delay in imposing what the Bush administration has called ``Plan B.''
``If I was sitting in those camps I could not stand the counsels of patience and delay,'' said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat.
``People are bleeding to death now,'' said Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware who heads the committee. ``It is genocide, we should act now,'' he added.
Among sanctions the United States had planned to impose were the addition of 29 Sudanese companies, most of them involved in oil revenues, to a current U.S. sanctions list of about 130 firms.
Washington also planned to further limit dollar transactions from Sudanese companies and to slap travel and banking bans on three individuals, including a rebel leader seen as ``obstructionist.'' 
TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT
Another strategy was to more aggressively enforce sanctions on Sudan, using similar tools as those employed to put pressure on Iran and North Korea.
``We believe it will have a substantial effect (on Sudan's economy),'' Natsios said of the planned new sanctions, pointing to those imposed on Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs as examples.
Natsios said he also hoped European nations would follow with their own sanctions including restrictions on Euro transactions in Sudan.
Biden asked Natsios why a no-fly zone had not been imposed over Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 and about 2.5 million more displaced from their homes by the conflict.
Natsios declined to discuss military options, except to repeat the Bush administration's view that ``all military options are on the table.''
Britain has also pushed for a no-fly zone in Darfur but U.S. defense officials say this is not an option being actively explored as such a measure would be hard to implement in an area the size of Texas.
The U.S. envoy said the situation on the ground in Darfur had become ``increasingly chaotic'' with neighbor Chad unstable as the war became ``dangerously regionalized.''
He urged Sudan's government to act with restraint as the war spilled over into Chad.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is set to leave Wednesday for Sudan, Chad and Libya in a bid to try and ease the crisis in Darfur. He is due back in Washington on May 19 and any sanctions are unlikely until the end of his visit.