Sudan was in the thick of the action this week due to the Darfur issue. The US has exerted its pressure on Khartoum by imposing more sanctions on the Arab and African state. And at the World Bank, after the departure of Paul Wolfowitz, the US has announced the appointment of Robert Zoellick to replace him. The events were contemplated, analysed and commented on. We present here excerpts of editorials from the regional and the international press.
US sanctions on Sudan
The US President George W. Bush ratcheted up US sanctions against Sudan for its atrocities in Darfur or, specifically, for not allowing in UN peacekeepers. The sanctions were imposed to put pressure on Khartoum to allow UN forces to monitor peacekeeping in the western region of the country where humanitarian agencies say at least 200,000 people were killed in the ethnic conflict.
Commenting on the sanctions, Christian Science Monitor, stated : "His [Bush] action, done on behalf of 'the conscience of the world,' just might force China, Sudan's main supporter, to find more of a conscience in helping end a genocide."
Since China imports most of Sudan's oil, the Christian Science Monitor felt that "what Beijing ultimately does will send a signal to nations in Africa that it has recently courted as economic partners: Regimes such as Sudan's can't abuse diplomacy when atrocities against innocents are going on."
The Los Angeles Times also noted that "the Darfur crisis probably won't be resolved until more pressure is brought to bear on China, and the real impetus for that pressure isn't coming from Washington but from Hollywood."
China has blocked attempts in the UN to impose UN-led sanctions on Sudan, the Los Angeles Times felt that pressure could be brought on China by blackmailing Beijing on the Summer Olympics in 2008. It said: "China, which sees the Games as a sort of coming-out party, is desperate to avoid an embarrassment like the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Yet it can't pretend to be a world leader, or even a responsible member of the international community, while funding a genocide. If it doesn't change its stance toward Sudan, there will be a bloodstain on next year's Games visible around the world, boycott or not."
Saudi Arabia's Arab News, however, felt that Sudan is far from being a failed state. "It has a unity government which includes members from the former breakaway south with whom it ended a 21-year conflict in 2005. It has growing hydrocarbon revenues. An administration which had the statesmanship to end one apparently interminable conflict ought to have the political savvy to deal with Darfur. Yet Khartoum has a dangerous blind spot about this appalling tragedy. Sudanese officials have protested that the death toll, far from being 200,000, is nearer 9,000. Leaving aside the fact that even 9,000 deaths should be unacceptable to any government, the disparity in the numbers is striking. If the Sudanese authorities are well enough represented in the region that they can make such a contradictory claim, why have they not also been able to initiate effective measures to bring the bloodshed and violence to an end?"
Zoellick at the World Bank
After the disgraceful exit of the controversial Paul Wolfowitz, the US has named Robert Zoellick for the post of the president of the World Bank.
Commenting on the new American appointee, the Financial Times stated that the Americans and Europeans have, like the Bourbons, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. "They still insist on their outdated droit de seigneur at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, even though it brings them little benefit, beyond the exercise of patronage."
