lready described what is taking place as genocide, but the Sudanese government yesterday said the UN report, to be published later this week, would not endorse that conclusion.
“We have a copy of that report and they didn’t say there is a genocide,” Mustafa Osman Ismail, the Sudanese foreign minister said in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, yesterday.
Such suggestions have dismayed Glenys Kinnock, a Labour MEP and overseas development spokeswoman, Michael Ancram, the deputy Tory leader, and Sir Menzies Campbell, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.
In a joint letter to Mr Blair, they wrote: “We fear the UN commission on Darfur will, in effect, signal to the military dictatorship in Khartoum that it can continue to murder its own citizens with impunity.”
Glad to see Menzies Campbell coming round to the idea of getting tough with dictatorships that murder their own citizens.
Last summer, Mr Blair said he believed Britain was doing everything possible for Darfur, and he visited Khartoum in October, where he said he had received assurances from the regime that the violence would be curbed. Those promises have been broken, according to Mrs Kinnock, Mr Ancram and Sir Menzies.
In New York yesterday, Australia, Canada and New Zealand urged the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions on Sudan’s regime and prosecute its members for war crimes.
Britain should surely be joining in here. Blair’s Khartoum visit did seem a miscalculation, serving only to make him look naive.
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