Darfur Daily News: June 18, 2005

[applegrove]

Thanks to SAVE DARFUR Latest News:
http://www.savedarfur.org/go.php?q=latestNews.html

June 17, 2005

Darfur crisis require most humanitarian attention

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=10217

Sudan Tribune

The conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur will require much more humanitarian attention than any other crisis in the world this year, the international Red Cross said Friday.



Sudanese visitor split U.S. officials

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sudan17jun17,0,4141788,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Los Angeles Times

A decision by the CIA to fly Sudan's intelligence chief to Washington for secret meetings aimed at cementing cooperation against terrorism triggered such intense opposition within the Bush administration that some officials suggested arresting him here, sources said. The U.S. continues to harshly criticize Sudan for human rights violations. In September, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur. President Bush reiterated that charge this month. Yet cooperation between the CIA and the Mukhabarat, Sudan's intelligence agency, has steadily grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.



From Rwanda, a lesson in heroism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/16/AR2005061601387.html

Washington Post

Paul Rusesabagina, the former hotel manager whose story inspired the movie "Hotel Rwanda," was in the Washington area for World Refugee Day events, where he was honored Wednesday by an audience that included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and actress Angelina Jolie.



Choice on Sudan is yours

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/06/17/news/columnists/brett/18-28-2906-16-05.txt

North County Times (California) Editorial

Her motives were clear: to raise money to help the victims of the ongoing atrocities in Darfur, to spread the word about the genocide, and to teach her teenagers that individuals can make a difference. Everyone she told about her project wanted to help. Her book club pitched in. Her son's friend designed the tickets. Her daughter's friends sold hundreds of wristbands. More than 250 people bought tickets to the concert at the Encinitas Community Center and $8,300 was raised for the organization Doctors Without Borders, which works directly with the victims.




"You have to go to save your life"

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/06/17/m10a_cramercol_0617.html

Palm Beach Post Editorial

"Mohamed Fator remembers the day he finally told his mother and three sisters he would be leaving - possibly forever - to try to avoid the fate of the estimated 400,000 fellow Sudanese who have died in deliberate, unceasing attacks in the past two years. <...> David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Washington, D.C.-based Save Darfur Coalition, put it this way: ‘Someone said to me today, 'Well, we've done the most already.' I say, when my neighbor's house is on fire, I don't stop putting out the fire because I've done more than anyone else.' He adds, 'Our neighbor's house is burning, and the children are locked inside.'"




College students speak out against African genocide

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/06/17/m10a_cramercol_0617.html

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

The ink on their final exams had barely dried. A hard-earned summer break was a mere hours old. But instead of catching Zs or hanging 10, a handful of students from the Claremont Colleges set right out on a mission to open eyes. Equipped with a mass of petitions, a few hundred T-shirts and a $400 gift card to Vons, five young women zig-zagged across California last month to spread awareness about the ongoing crisis in Darfur.




World can do more to end Darfur crisis

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17485202.htm

Reuters

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Friday the world -- including the bank -- must do all it can to help Sudan's Darfur region emerge from the suffering of genocide. Wolfowitz on Thursday called the situation in Darfur, a remote region of western Sudan where tens of thousands have been killed in fighting since 2003, a genocide.




World Food Program seeks to feed more than half Darfur’s population

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6DFE4J?OpenDocument

ReliefWeb

The United Nations World Food Program said today that up to 3.5 million people - or more than half the entire population of western Sudan's Darfur region - would need food aid at the height of the annual "hunger season" from August through the month of October.




Aid groups to meet war crimes prosecutor on Darfur

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N1711500.htm

Reuters

Leading humanitarian aid groups are to meet on Friday with the international prosecutor investigating war crimes in Darfur, a meeting that has prompted concerns about security for international aid workers as well as local villagers in the troubled Sudanese region. The Sudanese region has become a test of the effectiveness of the court, established to try persons accused of genocide, war crimes and mass human rights violations.

June 16, 2005

Rape Kits in Darfur

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/opinion/l15darfur.html?

June 15, 2005-New York Times Letter to Editor

I fear that the chief of mission at the Sudanese Embassy to the United States doth protest too much when he says: "Rape is a heinous crime. But word of mouth is not enough evidence for prosecution of rape crimes" (letter, June 10).




Dr. Gingrich: Wise Prescriptions

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/opinion/16thu1.html?

June 16, 2005-New York Times Editorial

A bipartisan, Congressionally mandated task force headed by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, has presented a clear statement of America's national interest in a revived and effective United Nations. Their balanced and thoughtful report, prepared over six months, features an unsparing analysis of the U.N.'s current problems and weaknesses. It also offers constructive recommendations on mobilizing Washington's powerful influence to promote urgent and necessary reforms, including some already proposed by the U.N. itself.
It also usefully calls for stronger measures to prevent and punish sexual abuse by peacekeepers; enhanced protection for whistle-blowers; American leadership in preventing genocide, starting with Darfur; and United States support for regional war crimes tribunals and truth commissions.




World Bank chief, in Africa, defends U.S. Iraq role

http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WTCO5DAUYRAV4CRBAEZSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8812280

Thursday June 16, 2005-Reuters

Paul Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy defense secretary and one of the architects of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, is on a four-nation tour of Africa, which he has said will be his first priority as head of the World Bank. He said Sudan's western Darfur region, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in two years of fighting, was suffering a genocide, like Rwanda in 1994. "Unfortunately it is too easy to say 'never again'. But people say it too easily, it seems... It happened in Rwanda, and is happening in Sudan," he said, without elaborating.




Russia to send peacekeepers to Sudan

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=10189

Thursday June 16th, 2005 (ITAR-TASS)

Russia will take part in the UN's peacekeeping operation in Sudan and will send up to 50 servicemen to this East African country to work as liaison officers, military observers and staff at the UN mission's headquarters, a high ranking representative of the Russian Defence Ministry told an ITAR-TASS correspondent today.




ICC prosecutor vows to 'complement' Sudan's Darfur court

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=10177

Thursday June 16th, 2005 (AFP)

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Wednesday that the Hague-based body would complement Sudan's own controversial tribunal to try Darfur criminals. "We will respect any genuine proceedings," Luis Moreno Ocampo told reporters, in reference to Khartoum's special court which was due to hold its first hearings on Wednesday but is branded a fraud by rebels and rights groups.





UN Annan demands Sudan start disarming militias in Darfur

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=10182

June 16, 2005 Associated Press

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded that Sudan's government disarm the militias terrorizing people in Sudan's Darfur region. In a report to the Security Council on Wednesday, Annan warned that militias were still roaming Darfur, chasing people from their homes and harassing others in camps. He put the responsibility for curbing them squarely on the government.




Congress group wants more US backing of AU efforts in Darfur

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=10179

WASHINGTON, June 15 (AFP) -- Washington should be able to contribute considerably more to the African Union's peacekeeping operations in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, according to a congressional work group looking at United Nations reform."The AU mission is short on critical assets that would greatly enhance its capabilities, and the US is capable of generating a package of assistance to improve its effectiveness," said the group co-presided by US former lawmakers Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell.

Here is a DU discussion by Sat Jun-18-05 07:33 AM
titled: NYT- C.I.A. Role in Visit of Sudan Intelligence Chief Causes Dispute .... and found at the DU at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1559894


"By SCOTT SHANE

Published: June 18, 2005

WASHINGTON, June 17 - A decision by the Central Intelligence Agency to fly Sudan's intelligence chief to Washington in a C.I.A. jet in April set off a dispute inside the Bush administration, with some officials arguing that such recognition for a government accused of genocide and ties to terrorism sent a regrettable signal, administration officials said on Friday."

-- Snip --

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/politics/18sudan.html

Here is another DU discussion on Wolfowitz apologises to Rwanda posted by sabra and the DU discussion at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1558159


Wolfowitz apologises to Rwanda

Jun 17 2005 05:59:34:857PM

"Johannesburg - New World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on Friday arrived in South Africa on the last leg of his maiden Africa tour for a series of private meetings and a tete-a-tete with President Thabo Mbeki. "

-- Snip --

http://www.finance24.com/articles/economy/display_article.asp?Nav=ns&lvl2=econ&ArticleID=1518-25_1722960