The Arab League is cautioning the West against threatening Sudan with sanctions over a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a move some in the Arab world see as a US pretext for toppling another Arab government.
Sudan says pressure over Darfur, where the UN says the world's worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding, aims to undermine the country's Islamist government, whose thawing ties with Washington have been put back on ice over the issue.
"Many would say that the US administration, as well as some European countries, have found in the Darfur crisis a long-lost pretext to put the government under the sword of international sanctions," Arab League spokesman Hossam Zaki said, adding an embargo would not help resolve the crisis, but antagonize Khartoum.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A US-drafted UN resolution, on which the UN Security Council was to vote yesterday, implicitly threatens Sudan with sanctions should the government not fulfill pledges to disarm Arab militias and provide aid workers relief access.
The US Congress has said the Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, are committing genocide against non-Arabs in Darfur, where fighting has displaced 1 million people and killed 30,000.
The Darfur rebels say the government armed and sent the militias against them. Khartoum denies the charge.
Many in the Arab world are angry over the US invasion of Iraq and what they see as an unswerving US bias towards Israel at the Palestinians' expense.
They are now questioning Washington's motives in promoting the Darfur issue in the Security Council.
"How come the Security Council ... and those with a humanitarian agenda are so active when it comes to such a situation, when they turn a blind eye to the miserable situation in the Palestinian territories?" Zaki asked.
Mohamed Mahdi Akef, head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington was using Darfur as an element of a plan "designed to fragment all states of the region, the beginning of it [the plan] was in Iraq."
The US in 1998 launched missiles at a Khartoum pharmaceuticals plant linked to terrorism figurehead Osama bin Laden, saying it was making ingredients for chemical weapons. Sudan, which sheltered bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, has been under US sanctions since 1997 for sponsoring terrorism.
But the US under the Bush administration has taken a more active diplomatic role in Sudan.
Under US pressure, Khartoum and the southern rebels have made great strides in the last two years towards reaching a final peace deal to end a 21-year-old civil war in the south separate from the Darfur conflict. Khartoum has agreed to a southern vote on secession six years after a final deal.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS