U.N. Bureaucrats
As Julie Flint, a reporter for the Daily Star, put it in a May 14 article on Darfur, "the international reaction to mass killing has been too little - and far, far too late."
"As Rwanda commemorated its dead, and a UN fact-finding mission reported finding similarities in Darfur to the 'brutalities' committed in Rwanda, the UN Security Council decided not to act, and postponed discussing the matter for a month. Once again, the UN failed to act."
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But U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the United Nations should not be blamed.
"We should avoid the situations where we allow member states to hide behind the secretary general, use him as an alibi for their own inaction," Annan told the Addis Tribune in Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.
It was not until yesterday, the same day Powell and Annan toured refugee camps, that the United States offered a UN resolution calling for an arms embargo and travel ban on Arab Militias, the Associated Press reported.
Busy Diplomats
Last week, the Arab News in Saudi Arabia reprinted a story from the Guardian of London, with the headline: "Darfur: The Cry of 'Something Must Be Done' Is Becoming Louder."
Correspondent Ewen MacAskill noted that one British organization called for the imposition of a no-fly zone to keep the Sudanese military out of Darfur.
"British government policy is to resist such calls and instead concentrate on diplomacy, maintaining dialogue with the Sudanese government and trying to win concessions through persuasion or pressure," MacAskill said.
The U.S. government also has a stake in traditional diplomacy, according to the BBC, which notes that Sudan "has a radical Islamist government which hosted Osama Bin Laden in the early 90s."
"Since then the Americans have worked hard at persuading Khartoum to be more co-operative. Osama Bin Laden was expelled, training camps were closed, and the US state department says Sudan has 'deepened its cooperation in investigating and arresting extremists.' "
Secretary Powell, the BBC says, "now has to tread a fine line between putting pressure on the Sudanese government over its activities in Darfur, and driving it back into the arms of America's enemies."
The Iraq Hangover
