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Confrontation over Darfur 'will lead us nowhere' (2) |
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09:46, July 27, 2007 |
"Such help targets the right cause of the conflict - poverty."
China has already given $10 million in humanitarian aid and promised to offer more.
China has used its ties with Sudan to build infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and water projects. But their relations have been politicized by a section of the media and some NGOs and politicians, Liu said.
Only 8.7 percent of the oil exports from Africa came to China last year, compared to 36 percent that went to Europe and 33 percent to the US. "If 8.7 percent is exploitation, how about 33 and 36 percent?" Liu said.
The Darfur issue has been unfairly played up partly because of the presidential election campaign in the US, he said. "Certain US politicians like to play up Darfur to show that they are standing on a higher moral ground."
And the people trying to connect Darfur with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Liu said, are either ignorant of reality or steeped in obsolete Cold War ideology. "They tend to distort China''s stance and refuse to recognize the constructive role China has played."
"It is not China's Darfur, it is first Sudan''s Darfur and then Africa's Darfur. We have cooperated, and will continue to cooperate on the Darfur issue, instead of confronting with other countries over it."
The Sudanese government has always been ready to talk with the political groups. It has accepted the "hybrid peacekeeping force" in Darfur unconditionally. Now, the UN is deliberating a resolution that will officially endorse the deployment of the "hybrid force".
There are differences, too, among Darfur's political groups, especially because they have now been divided into smaller factions with new demands, Liu said. So "more negotiations and compromises are needed to find a common ground".
The Second International Conference on Darfur, held in Tripoli from July 15 to 16, was a turning point for the political process, said Liu, who was among the participants.
All the parties agreed that the political process had fallen behind the peacekeeping efforts, and needed to be expedited because peacekeeping alone cannot restore real and long-time peace, he said.
The Tripoli meeting sent a strong message to the political groups in Darfur, too, that negotiations were the right way to resolve disputes, Liu said.
It was decided at the meeting that the parties would not join any initiative that didn''t have the backing of the UN and the African Union (AU). "That's very important because all the parties play out their acts on a common stage," he said.
The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) reached in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, in 2006 should serve as a foundation for negotiations with political groups that didn''t sign the peace deal.
"The DPA is the result of years' negotiation. There is no need to discard it and start from scratch."
It is still hard to say how much the Sudanese government will compromise and how much the political groups will ask for, he said.
The UN and AU special envoys for Darfur, Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim, have invited leaders of Darfur's political groups that have not signed a peace agreement with the government to a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, next week.
"That is a positive sign," Liu said.
China insists on a simple and practical resolution. "We should not put more differences in the UN resolution, or else the bargaining will continue forever and become more complicated," Liu said.
Source: China Daily
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