Bush to toughen sanctions on Sudan

05/29/2007

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg,
New York Times
May 28, 2007


WASHINGTON - President Bush will announce today that he is imposing tough economic sanctions against Sudan -- including penalties against two senior government officials and a rebel leader -- and that he will press the United Nations for additional actions to end the violence in Darfur, two senior administration officials said Monday.
The decision makes good on a threat that the president made nearly six weeks ago. Bush warned then that the United States would act if Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, did not permit a full deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces, allow aid to reach the Darfur region, and end his support for the janjaweed, the militias that have been systematically killing civilians there.

"Bashir needs to stop the violence and provide for his people," said one of the officials, both of whom spoke anonymously on Monday evening because Bush had not yet made the announcement. "He's been given an opportunity to do that and in the absence of doing that, we have to ratchet up sanctions."

Bush leaves next week for Europe to attend a meeting of the Group of 8, at which Darfur is expected to be an issue, and the officials said that Bush wanted to act before then.

The timing of today's announcement appears certain to anger U.N. diplomats, who have been reporting progress in talks with Bashir and have been aggressively lobbying U.S. officials to delay sanctions. Sudan's official news agency reported Saturday that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has agreed to go to Khartoum to negotiate a deal on a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.

But Bush sees little evidence that the diplomacy is bearing fruit, aides said.

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