Americas

Americas

US presses Sudan as Clooney voices outrage

14 March 2012 19:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The United States on Wednesday urged Sudan to allow in food shipments immediately to avert a humanitarian disaster, as Hollywood star George Clooney accused the Khartoum government of war crimes, APA reports quoting AFP.

Throwing an unusually large media spotlight on the nine-month-old conflict in the South Kordofan region, Clooney testified before a Senate committee at which US officials warned that some 250,000 people could soon go hungry.

Princeton Lyman, the US special envoy on Sudan, said the mountainous region was on track for "a major humanitarian crisis" due to persistent bombings by government forces that have impeded agriculture.

The United States has told Sudan that it "must allow international humanitarian access and that the world can’t stand by -- certainly the United States could not stand by -- and watch a crisis unfold if the government does not take action," Lyman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Four senators also proposed a resolution to demand that Sudan grant access. Senator Chris Coons, who heads a Senate subcommittee on Africa, said if aid does not come in, "innocent men, women and children will starve to death."

Clooney traveled clandestinely several days ago to South Kordofan, a trip he first detailed Tuesday before a think tank in New York. He showed the packed Senate room a video of his visit including footage of a nine-year-old boy whose hands both appeared to have been blown off by shrapnel.

The "Ocean’s Eleven" star said he saw hundreds of people running to the hills or hiding in caves due to the omnipresent buzzing of the Antonov planes, from which Sudanese forces manually dump notoriously inaccurate bombs.

"These people every single day of their lives have to deal with fear, not just of the future in terms of starving to death but actually actively being killed," Clooney told the Senate hearing.

Clooney, a longtime activist seeking to end what the United States has called genocide in Sudan’s western Darfur region, said South Kordofan was "ominously similar." Clooney said President Omar al-Bashir and his aides are "proving themselves to be the greatest war criminals of this century by far."

South Sudan became independent in July following two decades of war. Bashir initially won cautious international praise for accepting the secession.

But a new conflict broke out soon afterward in South Kordofan and nearby Blue Nile state, with Khartoum fighting insurgents once allied to the former rebels who now rule South Sudan.

Clooney urged Obama to send an envoy to China -- which has defiantly remained Khartoum’s top partner -- as he said Beijing was feeling the pinch from a shutdown in oil shipments due to the rift between Sudan and South Sudan.

Clooney had tried to pressure China over Darfur ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saying it had a moral responsibility. But Clooney said Wednesday: "That doesn’t really work; guilting people often doesn’t."

Clooney said China now had an economic incentive to work on Sudan and urged the United States to "use this window of opportunity before it gets too late."

Sudan has bristled at the US pressure, including the postponement of a conference in Istanbul that would have sought economic support for Khartoum.

Lyman acknowledged the need to address concerns by Khartoum, saying Sudanese leaders fear another breakup of the country and have "a deep suspicion of the motives of the international community" in pressing for access.

"The US has repeatedly stressed to the government of South Sudan the need to end all support -- military, economic and logistical -- to armed groups aiming to overthrow the government of Sudan by force," Lyman said.

Lyman also voiced guarded hope after an agreement brokered by the African Union for Bashir to travel soon to South Sudan for talks with his counterpart Salva Kiir.