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UN Secretary General: Mission Impossible By Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman
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Sep 6, 2007 - 8:41:18 AM

UN Secretary General: Mission Impossible

By Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman

 


		September 6th, 2007- The UN chief, Ban Ki�Moon, was quoted as saying that ecological factors are to blame as the cause of the conflict in Darfur, excluding the political motivation of the crisis on 
		
			Monday 3rd September 2007
		 at the Khartoum Friendship Hall in 
		
			
				Sudan
		. Since Mr. Ki-Moon had delivered similar remarks at the UN headquarter in 
		
			
				New York
		, last June, it is possible to conclude that he means and believes in what he had asserted. Those remarks are an oversimplification of the crisis at best and an insult to the people of 
		
			
				Sudan
		 in 
		
			Darfur
		 in the IDP Camps, Refugees and those in the Diaspora at worst. Unfortunately, the Secretary General seems to be orchestrating what the 
		
			
				Khartoum
		 regime has been remorselessly stating to justify its atrocious genocidal acts on the people of 
		
			Darfur
		. Loss of human life in 
		
			Darfur seems to have lost its value last night for the UN Secretary General. Mr. Ki- Moon needs to understand that farmers and herders in Darfur lived in harmony for centuries despite prolonged spells of drought that occurred in the Region way back in history prior to the National Islamic Front�s Coup d'�tat and their reign of terror. Competition for increasingly scarce resources in 
		
			Darfur
		 has become an easy escape goat. Come on Mr. Ki-Moon! The softly - softly approach your administration has adopted sends a wrong signal to the National Congress Party (NCP) government.
			  It gives a tacit support to the notorious acts it carried out in 
		
			Darfur and the sufferings it caused to the people there. The credibility and impartiality of the UN will risk becoming questionable if this type of viewpoint continues to be held with conviction by its top jobholder. This NCP regime will only pay attention and responds with commitment when coercive diplomacy is applied with threat of outright military force is used.
		

		
			 

Mr. Ki-Moon�s UN predecessor Kofi Annan had warned the international body's Commission on Human Rights in April 2005 that the threat of genocide was brewing in Darfur, just as it had a decade earlier in Rwanda . Moreover, the UN described the Darfur crisis as the 'World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis.� Furthermore, as reports of mass rapes, destruction of villages and targeted murders of civilians brought criticism from world leaders and visits from the likes of Colin Powell and Kofi Annan, President Bush in September 2004 had declared the masaccres in Darfur a �genocide,� but that designation has prompted little action from the U.S. government. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for the rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers in Sudan when she addressed the UN Security Council on Tuesday, May 9, 2006. The UK and France, with US support, have agreed and tabled a UN Security Council resolution that could see peacekeeping troops deployed in Darfur by October 2007. It is   not at all clear that the U.N. is capable of taking decisive steps to enforce its resolutions (UN Security Council Resolutions: 1593, March 31, 2005, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter referred situation in Darfur since 1st July 2002 to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC); Resolution 1706, August, 31, 2006 and Resolution 1769, July, 31, 2007).

 

Observers cannot see the point of the relentless shuttle visits by UN Security Council Permanent Member State officials and Senior UN staff to Sudan whilst Resolutions authorized by the UN Charter are not going to be acted upon. Maybe, UN officials are haunted by the failures of the 1990s when a string of unprepared missions resulted in disaster in Africa and the Balkans.

 

Mr. Secretary General, the people of Darfur are in the fifth year of ethnic cleansing, adversity, destruction and devastation that ravaged their Region. Your predecessor, Kofi Annan, toured and toured throughout Darfur and sat with the women and children in the IDPs Camps. He read the misery in their eyes.   Moreover, he listened to them after he witnessed effects of injustice and aggression. The UN wrote reports and passed resolutions on the conflict of Darfur sufficient to occupy distinct space in the Guinness Book of Records. All humanity is chanting �enough is enough Mr. Ki-Moon; We don�t want to restart the saga of report writing and fact finding missions; sufficient evidence has been made ready for you to act; No more talk, Mr. Ki-Moon!.�

 

 

Dr. Mahmoud.A.Suleiman is the Deputy Chairman of the General Congress for the Justice & Equality Movement (JEM). He can be reached at [email protected]

 

 

 

 

 



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