February 15, 2005
The United States circulated a draft U.N. resolution Monday calling for a large peacekeeping force in southern Sudan but dodged the question of what kind of court should try accused war criminals in Darfur. The U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution would impose a travel ban and freeze assets on those who violated a cease-fire in Darfur, in western Sudan, where at least 70,000 people have been killed and 2 million made homeless.
The text would create a Security Council committee to identify which individuals should be subject to the sanctions. "If you are going to have peace in Sudan, you have to have peace in Darfur," U.S. Deputy Ambassador Stuart W. Holliday told reporters. The eight-page draft resolution demands accountability for atrocities "through internationally accepted means" but does not say where the accused perpetrators should be tried.
Diplomats said the United States had not marshaled enough council support for its proposed new court in Arusha, Tanzania. Of the 15 council members, nine prefer the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the first permanent global criminal court for trying individuals for genocide, war crimes and mass human rights abuses. The Bush administration strongly opposes the ICC, fearing it could be used to prosecute U.S. soldiers and other officials serving abroad. U.S. officials said Washington would pay most of the cost of the Tanzania tribunal. Consequently, the resolution may be adopted, possibly within two weeks, without mentioning the name of a court if no agreement is reached by then.
The measure again threatens to establish an oil embargo if violence continues in Darfur, but diplomats said there was little chance it would be implemented. A key aim of the resolution is to implement a peace agreement signed on Jan. 9 that ended a 21-year-old civil war in southern Sudan, with a large peacekeeping force of 10,000, 715 police and a host of civilians. The peace pact calls for political power-sharing in the capital, Khartoum, as well as a division of oil and other resources.
The resolution also leaves the door open for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur and asks Secretary General Kofi Annan to report on options to help the African Union, which has more than 1,000 troops and monitors in Darfur and hopes to have 3,000 on the ground by mid-April. Sudan is also banned from conducting offensive military flights. "We will hold people to account who are involved in the kinds of attacks that have been reported by the African Union in Darfur," Holliday said.
The draft calls for a weapons ban that would include the Sudanese government in Darfur, rather than just armed groups, such as brutal pro-government militia accused of slaughter, rape and the pillaging of farming villages. If the government has to move arms or offensive military equipment covered under the embargo, it must notify the Security Council, Holliday said. The resolution for the first time establishes a special unit within the peacekeeping force that would monitor the conduct of the troops themselves to prevent "sexual exploitation and abuse," as occurred among forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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