U.S. and European media

December 22, 2022

Voice of America: Mbeki: Darfur Conflict Must Be Settled Before Sudan's Elections. The African Union Panel on Darfur, led by Thabo Mbeki, has briefed the U.N. Security Council on its work to bring about peace and reconciliation in Sudan.  Mr. Mbeki said securing peace in Darfur will be essential to carrying out credible elections next year. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki told the U.N. Security Council that during his visit last week to Sudan, he found broad support for the AU High Level Implementation Panel's recommendations to guide the country through national elections and a permanent end to violence in Darfur. He says a comprehensive settlement should build on sharing power and wealth, national reconciliation and national unity in Sudan.

Bloomberg: Sudan Passes 2011 Referendum Law, South Boycotts Vote.  Sudan's parliament voted to hold a referendum in 2011 on whether the oil-producing south will secede, even after lawmakers from the region walked out of the assembly to protest against conditions for the ballot.  The legislation, announced by Parliament Speaker Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Tahir in Khartoum today, may increase tensions between the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement, or SPLM, and the National Congress Party of the north. The two sides share the African country's oil wealth under a 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war.  The SPLM objects to an article in today's law allowing southern-born Sudanese living in other parts of the country to register and vote. The party says the referendum must take place only in the south, and its lawmakers refused to join today's vote after their appeal to delay it was rejected by Al-Tahir.

The following op-ed appeared in Foreign Policy by Sean P. Brook: Time to Take Away Sudan's Credit Card.  Omar al-Bashir's brutal Sudanese regime certainly has nerve. On Dec. 14, as Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) thugs violently suppressed the second peaceful demonstration by opposition groups in seven days, the Sudanese minister of finance met with the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration and urged the United States to lift sanctions on Khartoum and cancel Sudan's foreign debt -- in other words, bailing out the government that brought you such atrocities as Darfur and the decades-long civil war with South Sudan that now ominously threatens to reignite.

The following op-ed appeared in the Wichita Eagle by Senator Sam Brownback: Stand up to genocide. Answering questions before a congressional panel recently, President Obama's special envoy for Sudan, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, conceded that the U.S. government's new Sudan policy included direct negotiations with Sudanese officials complicit in an ongoing genocide. This simple, apparent, yet profound admission should alarm anyone concerned about our ability to deter future genocides. Sudan is the test case of the United States declaring genocide in progress; how we react and with whom we negotiate in Sudan will shape how -- and how effectively -- we confront the world's worst human rights abusers for decades to come.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].