Relishing Trips To Dictatorships, Sen. Kerry To Visit Darfur

To what end is Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) planning on visiting Darfur, Sudan?

US Democratic Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will visit Darfur next week, a US official said on Monday, amid signs of thawing US-Sudan relations.

"John Kerry will arrive in the middle of next week, he will visit Darfur and meet with officials in the country. His visit will last a few days," the official said, requesting anonymity.

US President Barack Obama's new Sudan envoy Scott Gration is currently in Sudan, where he appealed for stronger relations with Khartoum and met several Sudanese officials.

Gration was in south Sudan on Monday and might meet President Omar al-Beshir in Khartoum before returning to the United States at the end of the week.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Beshir last month for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the six-year conflict in Darfur.

Beshir's regime has since expelled many international aid organisations working in Darfur, where Gration has said the humanitarian crisis is "on the brink of deepening."

It's being billed as a fact-finding mission, but we already know the facts. There's no way that the US is going to take action against Sudan to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and the Sudanese government in Khartoum is well on the way to finishing the job.

What makes little sense is the claim that the US-Sudanese relations are thawing, or that there is any reason to believe that they should thaw. Sudanese President Bashir has been indicted on war crimes and genocide charges, and this is a regime that the Obama Administration wants closer ties with? In what bizarro world is this Administration living in? This isn't a regime to have closer ties with. It's one to be even more wary of given that al Qaeda has been active in Sudan and the Darfur genocide shows just how far the regime is willing to go to carry out its destructive policies.

Kerry has been quite busy visiting despots and dictators, having just been to Syria to take the pulse of the Syrian dictator Assad, whose regime has been supporting Hizbullah and Hamas in its war against Israel and has been repeatedly engaging in destabilizing activities in Lebanon. Kerry is the Administration's frontman in dealing with these odious regimes, and he seems to relish the opportunity.