Washington – President Bush has decided to implement a plan to pressure Sudan’s government into cooperating with international efforts to halt the violence in its troubled Darfur region, where his administration said almost three years ago that genocide was taking place.
Administration officials said Monday that the Treasury Department will step up efforts to squeeze the Sudanese economy by targeting government-run ventures involved with its booming oil business, which does many transactions in U.S. dollars. Bush will sanction two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the Darfur violence.
The United States will seek new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Khartoum, as well as a provision preventing the government from conducting military flights in Darfur. The government has been accused of bombing Darfur villages.
Bush has been considering such steps for months and was set to announce the plan last month at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
But he held off at the behest of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who wanted more time for diplomacy with Sudan’s president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, toward allowing international peacekeepers.
But Bush sees little evidence that the diplomacy is bearing fruit or that Bashir is proving more cooperative, aides said. Bush plans to announce the coercive measures today at the White House, they said.
The timing of today’s announcement appears certain to anger U.N. diplomats, who have been reporting progress in negotiations with Bashir and have been aggressively lobbying U.S. officials to delay sanctions.
Sudan’s official news agency reported Saturday that Ban has agreed to travel to Khartoum to negotiate a deal on a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.
