OBAMA, GRATION, BASHIR AND YOU - ENOUGH OF THE NONSENSICAL HANDLING OF DARFUR ISSUES
* Gration's remark of "Remnants of Genocide"
* Gration telling Darfuri refugees to go back to their torched villages without any safety measures in place
In regards to working to end the genocide in Sudan, Scott Gration said, "We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration. "Kids, countries - they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement..."
...U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges. Although Gration describes the approach as pragmatic and driven by a sense of urgency, his critics here and in the United States say it is dangerously, perhaps willfully, naive. "
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
From the Enough Project
"...the U.S. was offering honey to incentivize good behavior from Sudanese ruling party. This week, cookies and gold stars seem to round out the U.S.’s diplomatic arsenal in its dealings with Sudan. That is, if you ask the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Maj. General Scott Gration..."
Scott Gration has made so many blunderous statements, one might think President Obama has turned his back on Darfur completely, even with the so-called recently announced Sudan policy.
Gration tells refugees to return to torched villages
Suggestion Rejected by Refugees
NEW YORK, Aug. 5 -- The Obama administration's Sudan envoy is facing growing resistance to a suggestion he made recently to civilians displaced from Darfur that they should start planning to go back to their villages. Darfurian civilians and U.N. relief agencies say it is still too dangerous to return to the region where a six-year-long conflict has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people.
Washington Post article on the this
abcnews.com ~Gration: "Remnants of genocide"
US's Gration Rewards the Genocidal National Congress Party (NCP)
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President Obama assigned Scott Gration as U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan on March 18, 2009. And only after the public spoke up enough and Obama couldn't ignore our voices.
And then Scott Gration has been trying to be friends with the perpetrator of the genocide of the Darfuri people, Omar al-Bashir - with the purpose to resolve the problem. Some problem - a 7 year genocide, well-documented, that is supported by the Khartoum government in power and then Obama's Envoy has been trying to make bargains with the person doing the nasty work.
YOU
If you and I don't speak up and tell President Obama that we have had enough of the nonsense that he has allowed to go on regarding the handling and bungling of the Sudan quagmire by his Special Envoy Gration - then Obama's legacy will be identical with George W Bush's about genocide.
It is amazing what we will let stand. When enough of an outcry from the public doesn't happen, our leaders don't do what is right. Often.
We don't speak up and use the best power we have ~ Our Voices.
LIVE WEBCAST
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 7:00 pm. USA EST
On Thursday, December 10 at 7:00 p.m., please join us at www.ushmm.org/webcasts/rice for a live webcast of a special program with U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice. Michael Abramowitz, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, will interview Ambassador Rice, discussing her work at the United Nations and her experiences working on issues of genocide and mass atrocities and what can be done to prevent such crimes in the future.
Help spread the word about this special webcast
Tell your friends to watch by visiting this page, www.ushmm.org/webcasts/rice
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If you missed the live webcast, you can still watch it at www.ushmm.org/webcasts/rice
It is recorded.
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SUDAN:
U.S. Envoy Faces Intense Scrutiny over Darfur Policy
Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49546
Matthew Berger
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) - As U.S. special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration defended the Barack Obama administration's new policy toward the war-torn country on Capitol Hill Thursday, NGOs and a U.N. official reacted with disappointment and impatience.
Before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Gration faced persistent questioning from some members of Congress over the policy's inclusion of carrots alongside the sticks favoured by most international organisations.The policy, announced Oct. 19, aims bring the conflict in the western-central Darfur region – which the U.S. and others have labeled as genocide – to an end as well as maintain the peace between the northern and southern Sudan that was established by a 2005 treaty.
This peace is thought to be threatened as tensions rise ahead of elections in April 2010 -the country's first since 1986 – and a referendum on possible southern secession the following year.
But the policy's path toward achieving these goals traces a controversial route between sanctions, whose effectiveness is more widely accepted, and a strategy of negotiating with Khartoum, for which Gration reportedly advocated and for which he has come under fire from advocacy groups. Gration, a retired Air Force major general, said in September that the U.S., in order to secure the cooperation of President Omar al-Bashir's government, should "think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement".
Thursday, Senator Sam Brownback, who was allowed to participate in the House hearing, led Gration down an accusatory and intense chain of logic which culminated in the question, "You are dealing with a government that is conducting an ongoing genocide, is that correct?"
"I am dealing with a government," said Gration.
After a brief back and forth, Gration repeated, "I am dealing with the government in Khartoum of Sudan."
"Which is currently conducting a genocide in Sudan, is that correct?" said Brownback.
"That is correct," Gration conceded.
While these meeting are "in an effort to end the conflict, in an effort to end gross human rights abuses", as Gration told Brownback, these objectives have not been enough to get advocacy groups off the envoy's back.
They were particularly upset Thursday that Gration did not reveal details of the carrots or sticks that were supposedly included in the administration's Sudan policy.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken in October of a "classified annex" that listed the incentives that would be on the table for Khartoum.
"There is no annex," Gration said Thursday. "I'm telling you that I've never seen one."
"The big surprise was there is not a classified annex. And that suggests there is a big hole at the center of the administration's strategy. They haven't clearly articulated for themselves, international partners, Khartoum and other actors what the benchmarks are for progress," said Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Sam Bell, executive director of the Genocide Intervention Network, echoed Fowler: "After hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives and the public release of an administration policy, we still haven't heard what specific benchmarks Special Envoy Gration is using to measure progress in Sudan. It is also alarming to hear there might not be a classified annex given the prominent announcement of it at last month's policy roll-out."
Gration did, however, mention "classified working papers" on which he would be willing to brief members of Congress privately. He also said the administration has told China, which has significant investments in oil-rich Sudan and reportedly sells arms to the country, that they should join the U.S. in imposing sanctions.
"We have. We have, indeed," Gration responded when pressed on the question. He said President Obama and Chinese Prime Minister Hu Jintao discussed the matter in private during their meetings in Beijing last month.
But Enrico Carish, coordinator of the most recent U.N. Panel of Experts on Sudan report, told the committee later in the day that "the United States appears to have now joined the group of influential states who sit by quietly and do nothing to ensure that sanctions work to protect Darfurians."
He contrasted this with actions of the Bush administration, particularly in 2004 and 2005.
Carish was less than enthusiastic about a mixed sanctions-negotiations approach. He said the U.S. and others have backed off their enforcement of a U.N. arms embargo against Sudan, allowing weapons from countries like China and Chad to illegally enter the country in recent years.
"Increasingly it looks like poorly understood and under-enforced U.N. sanctions are being sold out in favour of mediation whose success is far from ensured," Carish said.
Gration also noted that U.S. officials would meet in January for a quarterly evaluation of Khartoum's progress toward the goals laid out in the U.S. policy.
In terms of the upcoming elections, he said he was concerned about not only escalating violence ahead of the votes but also procedural disagreements and the contested census results that are slowing voter registration. "We are deeply engaged with the parties through the trilateral process to resolve these outstanding issues," he said.
The 2005 treaty, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ended a 21-year civil war between the north and south in which two million people are believe to have died. It also laid out a path toward elections – a path which has proven to be rockier than hoped.
In his testimony Thursday, John Prendergast, co-founder of the Center for American Progress' Enough Project, focused on the importance and difficulty of free and credible elections.
"The parties should agree to delay the election until the conditions mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement exist, because the U.S. and international community should not recognize any election that does not meet basic standards," Prendergast said.
To reach these conditions, he said, "Sanctions on the Sudanese government should be ratcheted up, including enforcement of the arms embargo, denial of debt relief, and greater support for further International Criminal Court investigations and indictments."
Bashir has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Gration said reports have placed the number of Sudanese registered to vote at 12 million, though the numbers vary greatly "across constituencies". Voter registration will conclude next week.
But in Darfur, two million people have been driven from their homes and 300,000 have died since the conflict began in 2003, according to the U.N. Darfuris, and millions of other Sudanese, are expected to be largely left out of the election.
Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49546
CNN: Sudan rejects war crimes warrant for leader. Sudan will never comply with a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hand over President Omar al-Bashir to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday. "That would never happen," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said. "And the United States itself is not a member of the ICC. Let the government of the U.S. join the ICC." The Sudanese ambassador strongly criticized American lawmakers such as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, for asking pointed questions of the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, former Air Force Gen. Scott Gration, about whether or not Khartoum is conducting an ongoing genocide. Mohammad said it's an "over-exaggeration" to suggest that the central government is targeting Southern Sudan and its leaders. But he added that Khartoum does not want the country to break apart. "Our priority, in accordance with the (peace) agreement, is unity of the country." He said the idea that the south may vote to secede in 2011 is only a "hypothetical question."
Politico: Envoy rebukes Sudan, Admin condemns crackdown. The State Department issued a statement Tuesday afternoon condemning the Sudanese government's crackdown against protestors demanding elections in 2010. Special Envoy Scott Gration, who has been criticized as overly deferential to the regime in Khartoum, said: "I am deeply concerned about these developments and urge all parties to exercise restraint. Negotiations on issues of urgent importance to all of the Sudanese people cannot proceed in an atmosphere of intimidation." Spokesman Ian Kelly said in the release: "We condemn all acts of violence in Sudan and call for restraint and dialogue among all parties... The United States calls on the Government of Sudan to allow freedom of expression and peaceful demonstrations in the spirit of the Interim National Constitution...Freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and protection from against arbitrary arrest and detention are fundamental human rights that must be respected. Failure to do so threatens the chances of holding credible elections."
CNN: Fragile peace may unravel in Southern Sudan. High-ranking Western officials say an increase in tribal violence, pervasive hunger, lack of development and interference from the Khartoum central government in northern Sudan could cast autonomous Southern Sudan into free-fall even as southerners prepare to vote in January 2011 on whether to become an independent nation. They say violent tribal rivalries could engulf the south and lingering tension with the north could trigger a resumption of the civil war. The United Nations says more people have been killed in Southern Sudan this year than in the western region of Darfur, where a separate conflict drew international attention, prompted charges of genocide and led the International Criminal Court to indict the Sudanese president for war crimes. "A third civil war is very possible," said David Gressley, the United Nations' regional coordinator for Southern Sudan, if the key issues of oil, credible elections and north-south border demarcation aren't resolved.
Xinhua: Russia supports peaceful settlement of Darfur conflict: envoy. Russian special envoy to Sudan Mikhail Margelov said on Wednesday his country supports peaceful settlement of the crisis in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. "We support all efforts aiming at finding a peaceful settlement of Darfur conflict through political dialogue," said Margelov at a press conference following his meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum. He said the international community and the UN Security Council were exerting efforts to resolve the Darfur conflict, referring to the recent Doha-hosted forum involving Darfur civil community representatives. Russia also took part in the conference, according to the envoy. The Russian envoy urged the two parties which signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) -- the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) -- to work together to sustain stability and peace in the country.
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GENOCIDE IS NOT OKAY
USE YOUR VOICE
TO CALL UPON OUR LEADERS
TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT
ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS VERY WRONG
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202-456-1111
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Speak Up
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standnow.org
www.savedarfur.org
www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories
Labels: 800 GENOCIDE, Bush Failed in Sudan, Children of Darfur, Omar al-Bashir, President Barack Obama, Sandra Hammel ilovemylife, Save Darfur, Scott Gration Has Got to Go, Stand Now
posted by ilovemylife @ 8:05 PM
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