Bush orders new sanctions on Sudan
Condemns actions of government in Darfur as genocide
WASHINGTON -- President Bush ordered new US economic sanctions yesterday to pressure Sudan's government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur that the administration has condemned as genocide.
"I promise this to the people of Darfur: The United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world," the president said.
The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan's oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the violence in Darfur.
"For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder, and rape of innocent civilians," the president said. "My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide.
"The world has a responsibility to put an end to it," Bush said.
Bush had been prepared to impose the sanctions last month, but held off to give UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon more time to find a diplomatic end to the four-year crisis in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed.
Ban said at the United Nations yesterday that he still needed more time to promote political negotiations and persuade the Sudanese government to accept more peacekeepers. Asked whether the US sanctions would complicate his job of getting Sudan to agree to a larger UN-African Union peacekeeping force, Ban said: "We will have to see."
Sudan's government criticized Bush's action. "We believe this decision is unfair and untimely," Ali Sadiq, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. He urged the rest of the world to ignore the US move.
Bush also directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed UN resolution to strengthen international pressure on the Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir.
David Rubenstein, director of Save Darfur Coalition, welcomed the sanctions, but said they might be too little, too late. "President Bush must not give further months to determine whether these . . . measures work -- the Darfuri people don't have that much time," he said.
Bush said that he delayed imposing sanctions last month to allow more time for diplomacy, but that Bashir has continued to make empty promises of cooperation while obstructing international efforts to end the crisis.
" He's taken no steps to disarm these militias in the year since the Darfur peace agreement was signed," Bush said.
The conflict erupted in February 2003 when members of Darfur's African tribes rebelled against what they considered decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. Sudanese leaders are accused of retaliating by unleashing the janjaweed militia to put down the rebels using a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation, and plunder -- a charge they deny.
The new sanctions target 31 companies to be barred from the US banking system. Thirty of the companies are controlled by the government of Sudan; the other one is suspected of shipping arms to Darfur, the officials said.
The United States also is targeting three individuals, cutting them off from the US financial system to prevent them from doing business with US firms.
The Treasury Department said Ahmad Muhammed Harun, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs, has been accused of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Sudan's head of military intelligence and security, Awad Ibn Auf, was designated, along with Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group that has refused to sign the Darfur peace accord. 