Word: darfur
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With foreign-policy questions stacking like planes over a busy airport, Miliband will need a sense of clarity. The British government plans to focus on Darfur as well as Afghanistan, while continuing to reduce its participation in Iraq, and also contending with such headaches as a deteriorating relationship with Russia. Miliband won't have an easy ride. "Another couple of weeks and I'll probably be very white," he says, pointing to a gray streak in his black locks. If so, that'll be one less problem for him to deal with...
...dragon's wing has twitched. A tiny shift in China's Africa policy might just lead to peace in Darfur. China is Sudan's largest trading partner, buying 65% of its oil. Until now Beijing has protected Khartoum from the Western world, which was crying genocide and demanding intervention and sanctions. Now China has helped persuade Sudan to accept a new United Nations-led peacekeeping force of 26,000 military personnel and police, subsuming the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers who have failed to have any significant impact on the conflict...
...Imperialists," China wants a relationship of equality with other developing countries.) But lately, China has displayed a new willingness to twist arms in Sudan, and its officials have been talking in different terms about the crisis there. Listen, for example, to Liu Guijin, China's Special Envoy on Darfur, speaking in June at a conference on Africa: "China supports African countries in their efforts to improve democracy and the rule of law, and to practice good governance ... Closer cooperation between China and Africa is helpful to African countries in maintaining stability and enhancing governing capacity...
...increasingly frustrated by Sudan's stubborn refusal to cooperate with the U.N. At a closed conference in Beijing in late July, one Chinese adviser on Africa said pointedly: "The Sudanese government should be more cooperative with the international community and make more efforts to find a solution to the Darfur crisis...
...That's not to say there's an easy fix in Darfur. Resolving the conflict would require ridding the Sudanese government of its xenophobia in the short term, and, in the longer term, reversing climate change. (The Darfur conflict has its roots in the expansion south of the Sahara desert, which has pitched Arab nomads in competition with African-Arab pastoralists for ever decreasing fertile land.) Until it is fixed, however, Darfur will haunt the international community. Sometimes the U.N. isn't enough, as Rwanda demonstrated 13 years ago. The question is: What...