Word: darfur
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...next year, Beijing won't have its way. An aide to Steven Spielberg told ABC News last month that the producer would reconsider his role as an artistic adviser to the Games' opening ceremony if China didn't take a tougher stand on the government of Sudan over the Darfur crisis. Days later Beijing went along with a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to the war-plagued region. While a connection between Spielberg's pressure and the U.N. vote would be tough to prove, the timing certainly won't dissuade others from attempting to use the Olympics to pressure China...
...China has fallen into line and adopted Western positions on Africa. China would like to position itself as the mediator between an aggressive, imperialist West and a recalcitrant but misunderstood Sudan government. In the U.N. Security Council, Beijing secured the removal of phrases from the British-drafted resolution on Darfur, including the threat of sanctions if Sudan obstructed the U.N. deployment, and the condemnation of Khartoum for past violence against its own people...
...resolution means humanitarian aid workers will be safer, and so will the 1.8 million displaced people living in camps in Sudan. But to impose peace on all of Darfur would require a force several times larger, and with a mandate to attack militias and confiscate guns. The war has mutated. It began as a rebellion by two local movements; the government responded by arming Arab-speaking militias who attacked civilian communities of the same ethnicity as the rebels. Today the rebel movements and the militias have splintered, and more than 20 gangs range across the harsh terrain seeking loot...
...been decidedly noticed. The country's investments in Sudan, which increased in early July when China National Petroleum Corp. said it would spend an additional $25 million developing an offshore field there, have become a global flash point given the carnage the Khartoum government has allowed to continue in Darfur...
...loathed regimes? According to Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, who played a central role in negotiating the release of the Bulgarians, it's because Libya has proven it wants to help solve problems rather than create them. Gaddafi says Libya has mediated several conflict and crisis situations in Africa, including Darfur and Niger. That role, he says, has made the nation "the main diplomatic actor in North Africa." Gaddafi also confides Libyan diplomats have advised Blair on his Middle East mission, and have sought to facilitate his contacts with Hamas...