US Mulls Measures on Darfur

"Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says Washington is exploring a range of measures relating to the troubled region of western Sudan.

The options include exacting travel bans on Sudanese officials, freezing assets and imposing a no-fly zone in Darfur.

"There are already standing sanctions resolutions in the [United Nations] Security Council," Dr Rice said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he would support a no-fly zone as part of a sanctions package if Sudan continues to refuse to allow in a hybrid force."

AND SUDAN SAYS:

"Statements like this ... do not enhance peace," said Al-Samani al-Wasiyla, the Sudanese state minister for foreign relations. "They prolong the crisis," he said.

Sudan has rejected a UN Security Council resolution authorising the deployment of 22,500 UN troops and police in Darfur, where experts say around 200,000 people have been killed since the conflict flared in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect.

Sudan says Western media have invented and exaggerated the crisis in Darfur and only 9,000 people have died there.

AND THE U.N.?

In the latest indication of how bleak the situation is, the United Nations recently evacuated its staff from El Fasher, capital of northern Darfur, one of the two major centers for its relief operation to what the world body itself has termed "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

(The above report was written by J. Peter Pham (director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University), and Michael I. Krauss (professor of law at George Mason University School of Law). Both are adjunct fellows of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The full article is worth a read as it gives a good synopsis of the current situation in Sudan.