China Rejects Darfur-Olympics Link

By Edward Cody
January 10, 2008
The Washington Post
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011001066_pf.html


BEIJING -- China on Thursday rejected any connection between humanitarian concerns in Darfur and the upcoming Beijing Olympics, saying attempts to link them come from people unwilling to view China's role objectively in that embattled region of Sudan.

Some U.S. and European activists, including legislators and entertainment figures, have threatened to call for a boycott of the Olympics unless China exerts more pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with the peacekeeping forces and bring the four-year-old Darfur conflict to an end. But Liu Guijin, China's special envoy to Darfur, said China should not be held responsible for everything Sudan's government does just because Beijing and Khartoum have flourishing trade relations, including oil, infrastructure projects and weapons sales.

Liu defended China's position as Western governments and United Nations officials are intensifying criticism of the Sudanese government for throwing up obstacles to deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, which is supposed to field 26,000 troops but so far has only 9,000 on the ground.

His comments reflected a new-found determination by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to respond to critics of its policy in Sudan. In particular, the Chinese government has sought urgently to fight suggestions for a boycott of next summer's Beijing Olympics. Most Chinese regard the games as an international celebration of their country's swift progress over the last quarter-century; any boycott would be a political blow to the ruling Communist Party.

Liu said China already has used what influence it has to help resolve the Darfur conflict. For instance, he said, President Hu Jintao played a key role in persuading the Sudanese government to accept the idea of a U.N.-led peacekeeping force during a visit to Khartoum in February last year.

China has made a huge effort toward resolving the Darfur problem, Liu said in what was presented as a question-and-answer session on the government's http://china.com.cn Web site. We did a big job in persuading the Sudanese government to become a little more flexible, to accept the mixed peacekeeping force.
Liu said any attempt to make China responsible for what the Sudanese military and its local allies do in Darfur is without justification. Among those making such charges, particularly in nongovernmental activist groups, he said, are people who do not view China's role objectively and look at the Darfur tragedy through lenses colored by ideological bias.

Since black Africans in Darfur rebelled against the Arab-run Sudanese government in 2003, more than 200,000 people have died of conflict and disease and another 2.5 million have been driven from their homes, according to human rights groups. The plight of large numbers of homeless civilians in the arid region of western Sudan has generated widespread sympathy in the United States and Europe, including accusations that Sudan's efforts to put down the rebellion amount to genocide.

The Sudanese government has resisted international efforts to deploy a large peacekeeping force to bring the conflict under control, saying the forces should be primarily African. Khartoum, bowing to pressure from abroad, agreed in July to the 26,000-strong U.N.-African Union mixed force, but U.N. officials complain it has been slow to allow actual deployment.

The U.N. peacekeeping chief, Jean-Marie Gu¿henno, told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday that the force does not yet have necessary technical agreements with the Sudanese government for full deployment and, as a result, will not be able to carry out its mandate in the first months of this year.