US Willing to Impose UN Bans on Sudan Officials 

By Reuters
April 6, 2006
Source: The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-sudan-un-sanctions.html?_r=1&oref=login

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States is willing to impose sanctions on Sudanese government officials for atrocities in Darfur but has to make sure it has all the evidence, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said on Thursday.

The Bush administration so far has not agreed to names of government officials that Britain and others have put on an initial list slated for a travel ban and assets freeze by the U.N. Security Council, according to a resolution adopted a year ago, diplomats told Reuters on Wednesday.

``It's one thing to know with a high degree of certainty that the Sudan government has been involved in and indeed directing things like gross abuses of human rights and participation of the genocide in Darfur,'' Bolton said.

``It is another to be able to state with particular particularity this individual in the government or that individual in the government should be brought under sanctions,'' he told reporters.

Bolton said that if the council adopted sanctions, the U.S. government had to put into place simultaneously an executive order that would make the bans part of domestic law.

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the State Department was pushing to include more names on the list but other U.S. agencies, such as the Treasury, were resisting.

This list may be circulated shortly and if there are no objections, it would come into effect 48 hours later. But so far the envoys said Washington has limited its agreement to one Darfur rebel and one so-called Janjaweed militiaman.

The Darfur conflict erupted in early 2003 when mostly non-Arab tribes took up arms accusing the Arab-dominated Khartoum government of neglect.

The government retaliated by arming mainly Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who began a campaign of murder, rape, arson and plunder driving 2 million villagers into squalid camps. Khartoum denies responsibility.

``We are still accumulating evidence, looking for more facts and that sort of thing,'' Bolton said. ``It is certainly true that a long period of time has gone by and we are moving as rapidly as we can to come to a decision.''

Russia, China and Qatar, the only Arab member of the council, appear to want to ditch the sanctions list altogether, diplomats said. China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, said earlier this week there were more pressing priorities in Darfur, such as humanitarian relief and peacekeeping.

The Security Council a year ago asked an expert panel to draw up a list of those most responsible for blocking the peace process in Darfur.

The panel returned in December with a secret list, obtained by Reuters, that recommended for sanctions Sudan's interior minister, defense minister and the chief of Sudan's Mukhabarat intelligence agency, among others.