In a blow to Britain and the US, Russia and China blocked proposed sanctions against four Sudanese accused of interfering with peace efforts and violating human rights in conflict-wracked Darfur.
The sanctions would have been the first imposed by the UN Security Council since it adopted a resolution in March last year authorizing an asset freeze and travel ban on individuals who defy peace efforts, violate international human rights law, or are responsible for military overflights in Darfur.
A UN panel that investigated the Darfur conflict recommended last year that 51 people be prosecuted for war crimes, including senior government officials. But the four names, proposed by Britain and strongly backed by the US, were the first to be formally circulated for approval by the Security Council sanctions committee on Sudan.
Russia's UN Ambassador Andrey Denisov and China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya (
The African Union set April 30 as the deadline for a peace agreement and the Security Council has endorsed that target date. The Russians and Chinese want to wait for the outcome of the Abuja talks, which are being mediated by the African Union.
But US Ambassador John Bolton said the US saw no reason for a delay and was prepared to take the issue out of the sanctions committee and circulate a draft resolution that would name the four Sudanese and impose sanctions against them. If that resolution was put to a vote, Russia or China would be forced to use their veto power to block it.
Council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because the list has not been released, said the four names proposed for sanctions include one member of the Sudanese government, two rebel figures and one member of the government-backed Janjaweed militia.
Bolton asked for a Security Council meeting late on Monday to discuss the sanctions issue. But China's UN ambassador scheduled closed consultations yesterday morning, ahead of an open briefing in the afternoon by Salim Salim, the African Union's Darfur mediator.
"We have to see what is the best course of action that the council can take to help Salim," Wang said.
Denisov said the African Union asked the Security Council and the international community "to be constructive dealing with Sudanese issues because ... by April 30 we expect some outcomes of the Abuja talks."
"The whole situation, the whole political process in Sudan is also very fragile," Denisov said. "Let's wait, at least until the end of April, and then come back to the issue -- having the results positive or maybe not positive -- of these Abuja talks."
He said the council should follow the doctors' Hippocratic Oath of first doing no harm, in this case, "to that very fragile process in Sudan."
"Don't antagonize," he said. "Don't impose more tensions into the issue."
Wang reiterated Beijing's longstanding opposition to sanctions as unhelpful to resolving conflicts.
"China believes that this is not the right moment since the Abuja negotiations are under way and we expect progress on that," Wang said. "At this sensitive moment, to publish this list will have a negative effect on the negotiations there."
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS