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Sudan warns Britain and US against military action
Tony Blair refused to rule out military action and planned to discuss the situation in Darfur later with Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, as did Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, announced this afternoon that he would travel to the region next month.
The US has been pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the Sudanese Government, which has been accused of supporting militias blamed for atrocities against the African population in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Mr Blair today denied as "premature" a report that he had drawn up plans to send troops to the region, but when he refused today to rule out a military option, Sudan responded angrily.
Mustafa Osman Ismail, the Sudanese Foreign Minister, told a news conference in Paris: "The increase in pressure from the United States and Great Britain is ... the same as the increase in pressure that they put against Iraq."
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He suggested that it would be a mistake for Mr Blair to send soldiers. "You know what is going to happen in one or two months, these troops are going to be considered by the people of Darfur as occupying forces, and you'll have the same incidents you are facing in Iraq."
Mr Blair said that the UK was working closely with the European Union and the African Union to resolve the crisis. "We have got to move in concert with people but the critical thing is to try at least at this stage to make the current strategy work," he said.
Pressed again on military intervention, the Prime Minister added: "We have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can.
"But I think we need to work very carefully with the African Union because, after all, they are the regional political body.
"There is no point doing things unless you have very clear support in the region."
But Mr Ismail said that a draft resolution being considered by the Security Council to place sanctions on Sudan if it failed to act against the militias would only complicate matters.
"I don't know how such a resolution can be effective. We don't need any resolutions," he said.
Mr Ismail said that Sudan had arrested 100 members of the Janjaweed militia and was preparing to put them on trial. He added that his country needed time to settle the problem.
Jan Pronk, the UN envoy, said yesterday that the Sudanese Government had made "no progress whatsoever" in reining in the militia.
The new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights welcomed moves towards possible international intervention. Louise Arbour, said: "One can only welcome a very high degree of attention and state of preparation if there comes a point where the failure, or the inability, of the government of Sudan to discharge its responsibility to protect its own people calls for some form of intervention.
The United Nations estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, but some analysts put the figure much higher as militiamen have routinely attacked Africans over the last year in a campaign to drive them out of the region. At least 1.2 million of Darfur's 6.7 million people have fled their homes.
The death toll could surge to more than 350,000 if aid does not reach more than 2 million people soon, the US Agency for International Development has warned.