European Union leaders should support tough action against Sudanese leaders for their failure to end abuses in the strife-torn region of Darfur, the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
On the eve of a two-day EU summit in Brussels, the campaigning groups called for individual sanctions on Sudanese leaders, an assets freeze and a travel ban.
”Millions of civilians are paying the price for nearly four years of unkept promises and empty commitments,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
”With Khartoum having long learned that the global response is all bark and no bite, the situation is again predictably deteriorating and spreading across neighbouring borders”.
The two global NGOs called for the imposition of strong new economic, legal and military measures unless Sudan’s President Omar El Bashir acts immediately to stop all attacks on civilians, accepts the proposed new African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force and cooperates fully in new political-settlement efforts.
”Bashir has just been laughing at the ‘do this or else’ resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council so far,” said Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group.
The question of Sudan is set to come up in the EU leaders’ discussions on African issues.
Already the EU has tabled a draft UN resolution calling for a mission to be dispatched under the auspices of the UN’s human rights expert on Sudan.
This is opposed by the African group, which in its turn has tabled amendments calling for the mission to be composed of diplomats and headed by the president of the UN Human Rights Council.
The Council in Geneva resumed its special session on Darfur on Wednesday, with member states still divided despite pleas for unity and urgent action by Secretary General Kofi Annan and other top UN officials.
The vote, delayed from Tuesday, has been hampered by the fault lines between Western countries on one hand, and African and Islamic states on the other.
In a further sign of growing international pressure for action on Darfur, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was reported to have backed United States plans to impose a no-fly zone on the province, a call also supported by the NGOs.
The rights groups also called on the International Criminal Court to extend its present investigations into crimes against humanity already committed, ”and to threaten robust action against any future atrocity crimes, to maintain legal pressure on the Khartoum regime”.
The UN estimates that about 200 000 people have died and two million have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict between Khartoum and local rebels in Darfur began in 2003. — Sapa-AFP