(note: I haven't even mentioned the Iraq war here)
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U.S., OTHERS TAKE HEAT FOR OPPOSING U.N. GENOCIDE AGREEMENT
Published on Saturday, August 14, 2005 by OnWorld.net
by Abid Aslam
WASHINGTON, D.C., - International charity Oxfam is seeking to turn up the heat on governments it says are blocking efforts to prevent genocide and protect civilians from atrocities such as those seen during the 1994 bloodbath in Rwanda.
The organization is accusing prominent United Nations member states the United States, Brazil, India, and Russia of blocking, or at least giving the cold shoulder to, an emerging international agreement establishing an international duty to head off genocide and protect civilians from ethnic cleansing as seen in the Balkans.
Other governments opposed to the proposed measures, to be discussed at a U.N. summit in New York next month, include Syria, Iran, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, and Algeria, according to Oxfam.
''It is hard to overstate how important this is,'' said Nicola Reindorp, head of Oxfam's New York office. ''In one month's time, the biggest meeting of world leaders in history could endorse a new standard which could help stop a future Rwanda from happening.''
''We've taken the step of exposing the governments blocking the agreement so people around the world can call on them to change their minds,'' Reindorp added.
..more..
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0814-03.htm ---------------
**Now Remember the US Finally Calling The Situation in Darfur Genocide?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050105Y.shtml Sudan Becomes US Ally in 'War on Terror'
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian UK
Saturday 30 April 2005
Sudan's Islamist regime, once shunned by Washington for providing a haven for Osama bin Laden as well as for human rights abuses during decades of civil war, has become an ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror".
Only months after the US accused Khartoum of carrying out genocide in Darfur, Sudan has become a crucial intelligence asset to the CIA.
In the Middle East and Africa, Sudan's agents have penetrated networks that would not normally be accessible to America, one former US intelligence official told the Guardian. Some of that cooperation has spilled over into the war in Iraq: Sudan is credited with detaining foreign militants on their way to join anti-American fighters there.
<snip>
News of General Gosh's visit to Washington caused consternation in human rights circles. The general is among 51 Sudanese officials implicated in human rights abuses by the international criminal court.
"I quite understand that the war on terrorism means dealing with bad actors, but to fly in one of Sudan's chief committers of what Washington has formally described as genocide is deeply disturbing," said an independent Sudan analyst, Eric Reeves. He noted there had been signs of a slight thaw towards Khartoum for some time - despite the state department's official stance.
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http://www.merip.org/meromero042905.html Darfur and the International Criminal Court
Eric Reeves
April 29, 2005
On March 31, 2005, the United Nations issued another response to the vast crisis in the Darfur region of far western Sudan, referring various conspicuous violations of international law to the International Criminal Court. Though there have been five previous UN Security Council resolutions bearing on Darfur, the response contained within Resolution 1593 has gained far and away the most public notice because it seemed, at first glance, to have teeth. Major human rights organizations welcomed the possibility that perpetrators of the mass killings and displacement plaguing the Sudanese region since February 2003 could face trial and eventual punishment. Germany and other Western governments were gratified that the United States, long hostile to the Court, had stopped its obstruction of such an international justice effort. Given the extremely limited relevance of Resolution 1593 to the task of ending the destruction and human suffering in Darfur, however, the initial sighs of relief at the resolution's passage are grimly ironic.
The ongoing disaster in western Sudan deserves the name of genocide. The concerted military campaigns of the Khartoum government and its janjaweed militia allies have clearly included several of the acts stipulated in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide, in particular “killing members of groups ” and “deliberately inflicting on the groups conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.” Acts of the latter sort, exemplified in the case of Darfur by such tactics as razing of villages, burning of crops and looting of livestock, constitute what might be described as “genocide by attrition.”
According to a recent study by the Coalition for International Justice and independent research, state-directed violence and the resulting public health crises have claimed as many as 400,000 lives in Darfur since February 2003, overwhelmingly among the non-Arab or “African” tribal populations of the region. Available data suggest that an additional 2.5 million people have been displaced by the conflict, either within Darfur or as refugees to Chad. This displacement continues at an alarming rate. Three million people -- approximately half of Darfur's population -- are now “conflict-affected” and Jan Egeland, the UN's chief aid official, has indicated this number may grow to 4 million during the impending June-September rainy season. Famine conditions are already evident in parts of rural Darfur; food shortages and a collapsed agricultural economy (including spiraling food price inflation) ensure that the dying is far from done. The final death toll from this engineered catastrophe may exceed that of Rwanda's genocide
<snip>
Certainly on the list, then, is First Vice President Ali Osman Taha, presently the most powerful member of the NIF. It is widely known that Taha has taken primary responsibility for Khartoum's Darfur policy, even as he was chief NIF negotiator (and concession-maker) in the peace talks with the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement that concluded in Nairobi, Kenya on January 9. Interior Minister Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Hussein is also surely on the list, as he is, among other things, the primary architect of forced removals of internally displaced persons from camps of refuge in Darfur. So, too, is the director of security and intelligence within the NIF regime, Maj. Gen. Salih Gosh. Given the prominence of these men in regime policy generally, any assessment of the “deterrent” effects of an ICC referral must take account of their likely actions and motives.
<snip>
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http://www.sepnet.org/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=742&blogId=1<snip>
The report also establishes with welcome authority a clear chain of command within the Khartoum regime, both its military and security services and various of its political organs. This permits very clear inferences about the identities of those within the National Islamic Front regime whose names have been put under seal, pending referral to an international prosecutor (whether at the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc tribunal). For example, Sallah Gosh, the senior official in Khartoum's multi-layered National Security and Intelligence Service, is almost certainly named (see Para. 85-97), as is Abdel Rahim Hussein, Minister of the Interior and charged with the "Darfur portfolio" by the regime.
<snip>
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http://www.genocidewatch.org/SudanUSReportFindsBackingofkillings8sept2004.htmU.S. Report Finds Sudan Promoted Killings
Use of Term 'Genocide' Debated Ahead of Powell Testimony on Darfur Atrocities
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A17
A State Department report detailing atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan concludes that the Sudanese government has promoted systematic killings based on race and ethnic origin, but officials said Tuesday that there was strong debate over whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell should classify the violence as genocide.
<snip>
High-ranking Sudanese officials, including the head of National Intelligence Security Services and the former external affairs intelligence chief, are among the key figures ordering and coordinating the violence in Darfur, State Department sources said.
"Senior Bush administration officials appear reluctant to publicly identify senior officials involved in the atrocities in Darfur, including First Vice President Osman Taha and NISS chief Salah Abdala Gosh, because these officials are also in charge of the counterterrorism efforts and have been cooperating with U.S. officials," said Ted Dagne of the U.S. Congressional Research Service. "Targeting these officials could end cooperation on counterterrorism."
<snip>
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