With the number of corpses in Darfur steadily mounting, and President Bush again seriously involved in confronting what he has accurately called the genocide there, Mr. Bolton has been pressing hard to get the United Nations moving against the resistance of the government of Sudan, the perpetrator of the genocide.
Among Mr. Bolton's goals is sending a U.N. force, with possible NATO components, into Darfur to bolster the present small, beleaguered African Union contingent. He is also proposing targeted U.N. sanctions against some of the chief organizers of the genocide in the Sudanese government. (Britain is also working on a resolution that could lead to warrants from the International Criminal Court against the architects of the genocide.)
The three members of the U.N. Security Council blocking Mr. Bolton's proposed measures are Russia, China and Qatar. Qatar -- home of the Al Jazeera TV network but also with strong military ties to the United States -- represents the Arab states in the decision-making U.N. Security Council.
As Mr. Avni reports, although U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently spent a weekend in Qatar, he did not even discuss Sudan during his visit. Nor did he discuss the need for targeted sanctions against Sudanese officials and their Janjaweed militia involved in the atrocities that have slaughtered so many thousands and devastated the villages of black Africans in Darfur, and who are now also killing and raping refugees in neighboring Chad.
Qatar, resisting these sanctions, was supported by the United States in becoming part of the powerful U.N. Security Council. But like the other Arab states at the United Nations, Qatar appears indifferent to the genocide in Darfur, even though both the killers and the victims are Muslims.
Just don't expect to read about this in the New York Times. You'd have to check out the New York Sun or other regional papers to find out what is really going on in Darfur and what the UN is doing about it (nothing).
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