11 April 2005
interview
Washington, DC — After decades of neglect, world attention has recently focused on Sudan, Africa's largest country with a land area about one-quarter the size of the United States. A peace agreement has been signed between the government of President Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir in Khartoum, which dominates the north of the country, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the south, headed by John Garang..
A pledging conference attended by leading donor nations and institutions opened today amid hopes that new resources will become available to finance the country's reconstruction after 22 years of war. But the disastrous situation in the Darfur region threatens to overshadow and derail that process. Charles Snyder the leading U.S. negotiator for Sudan, discussed the problems and prospects in an AllAfrica interview. Excerpts:
What do you expect will come out of the donors conference?
The Oslo Conference has been a long time in the planning. It reflects a great deal of European interest in the Sudan issue going back over the last decade, and the idea of the Oslo conference was to reinforce and celebrate, if you will, the kind of good news of the comprehensive peace agreement.
Now Darfur of course has made that a more mixed story than it would have been. But the idea all along of the Oslo Conference was to pledge for the new development plan for the North, South and all of Sudan. There will now be some attention devoted to Darfur specifically but the idea is nonetheless to work on the joint assessment plans that the two Sudanese parties, North and South, have come up with for how do they develop over the next six years. The idea is to have the donors put their money where their political mouths have been. And we are still optimistic that, despite Darfur, we'll get fairly significant pledges.
The U.S. is hoping to make a substantial pledge, as you would expect, given our role there. But I am not going to steal the deputy secretary's thunder, and since he's going to Oslo. The Europeans, we expect, will do quite a lot. There are probably twelve development Ministers alone from Europe coming; Andrew Natsios [the USAID administrator] as well as our deputy secretary of state and a smattering of heads of state from Africa. It should be a significant conference.
The Sudanese government has rejected the UN Security Council resolution, which asked the International Criminal Court to try those whose are alleged to have committed war crimes and human rights abuses in Darfur. How will this impact the efforts to end the dying?
I think we all knew going into this Security Council vote that the Sudanese had said quite clearly that they didn't accept outside jurisdiction. It was their idea that their courts could do this. Barring that, of course, there was some talk about looking into an African tribunal or something that would be more African. They [indicated they] might consider that. But they had rejected from the beginning anything that was purely non-African so it is not a surprise.
It is not a difficulty yet because I think the big test will come as we see the ICC move forward, as we see the prosecutors examine the evidence. When presented with the facts in that regard, then we'll see if the Sudanese government is at all amenable to a rational process or not. And I think until we get there, for political reasons, they will continue to reject it. They don't know who is on the legendary list now of 51 people [recommended for trial]. They don't know whether this is going to be a political confrontation with them as opposed to a legal confrontation. And I think if those questions are answered in anything approaching a reasonable manner, we will be able to put a good deal of effective pressure on them. It's a little too soon to make a final judgment. It won't be easy, that's for sure.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has passed along the list of 51 names to the International Criminal Court. What is the origin of the list?
It comes from a Commission of Inquiry. When Congress passed that joint resolution last year calling the situation in Darfur genocide, Secretary Powell was already wrestling with this issue. He then decided actually to dispatch a team to Chad, including somebody from the American Bar Association and some people from other traditional NGOs that deal with legal and justice matters to see what the evidence was. They interviewed 1,136, I think it was, refugees. And they decided that there was intent, and therefore Powell made the declaration of genocide. That was the issue for us. It was not `Were these crimes not horrendous and massive violations clearly aimed at an ethnic group?' But one of the conditions of the Geneva Convention is intent. And while there was clearly intent among some of the local parties, maybe some of the local leaders, the idea of intent as it went to the government wasn't clear-cut for us. After the refugee interviews, Powell decided that that was the case.
Then we had the problem of making this first declaration of genocide under the Genocide Convention. We have to be sure about the precedence and that we didn't open the door for this to turn into political foolishness of some sort. And so the secretary of state made the point that, if only the United States says it's genocide, just like it was only the United States for a long time sanctioning in many ways, it can be dismissed as the U.S with a political objective.
So we took it to the UN, and Kofi Annan decided to appoint a commission of inquiry, which went out and did its work. That resulted in a list of 51 names, which none of us have. The names have not leaked, although there is speculations that it includes some people from the government, some of the tribal leaders, some of the military, some of the rebels.
The United States government abstained from the Darfur resolution because the Bush adminstration opposes the International Criminal Court. What impact is this likely to have on implementation of the resolution?
I don't think as a practical matter it will. The ICC is a self-contained operation that has its own prosecutors, its own court space. Clearly, when presented with human rights violations - significant war crimes and human rights violations - we'd have to look at what we could do. I think we need to answer that question in practice as opposed to in theory. I don't see any impediment mechanically to us deciding to do what we can on a case-by-case basis.
What actions does the U.S. government want to see to stop the killing in Darfur?
It's the same thing we've been saying all along - that the primary responsibility is on the government to change things on the ground. Secondarily, it's up to the international community to facilitate those that are trying to solve the problem on a practical basis, the African Union in this case. We're saying to the Sudanese government: `You've got to do more. You've got to arrest these perpetrators. You know who they are.' They took a small step in that direction by arresting 15 people, I think it was, the other day. It's too soon to say whether or not that was a political gesture, a false start or maybe the beginning of something more serious. We would hope it's the beginning of something more serious.
It doesn't bother me that they've seemed to have gotten 15 low-ranking people, because, if you're going to build a case in many instances like this, what you have to do is get the smaller fish to turn on the medium-sized fish to turn on the bigger fish. What indicates it might not be serious is the long, bad history of the Sudanese seeming to do everything with a lack of enthusiasm and a little late. We'll have to see how this turns out.
How would you evaluate what the African Union has been able to do to date and what more would you hope they could do?
The good news is that the African Union, despite its relative newness - since it just replaced the OAU two years ago - has stepped up to this problem. Where they are on the ground, they are making a difference. And that's the universal report. Jan Pronk [from the United Nations] has said that. Our own people who've gone out on the ground have said that. The Europeans say that. Where they've been on the ground, for instance, we've seen the violence dissipate, particularly this alarming growth in rapes and violence against women who are trying to gather firewood outside the camps.
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