Global Policy Forum

By Farah Stockman

The United States and European allies remained deadlocked yesterday over how war crimes committed in Sudan should be prosecuted, continuing a standoff that has delayed the deployment of 10,000 peacekeeping troops to the troubled country for two months, during which thousands of Sudanese civilians have died. US officials had hoped to put forward a resolution today, but continuing disagreements over the details of the resolution prompted them to postpone their formal proposal.

France and Britain, among other Security Council members, are insisting that any resolution to deploy peacekeepers include a referral of alleged perpetrators of the violence to the International Criminal Court, the global legal body adamantly opposed by the Bush administration. The United States instead proposes sending the alleged perpetrators of mass crimes to a special court which would be set up in Arusha, Tanzania. A senior US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called the European attempts to force the United States to accept the international court ''blackmail."

Yesterday Nigeria, the chair of the African Union, attempted to break the stalemate by offering yet another proposal: trying the crimes on an African justice and reconciliation panel that would take place with the blessing of the government of Sudan, which has been implicated in the killings. The mandate of the current UN mission in Sudan expires today. But since members failed to reach an agreement on a resolution that would replace it, UN officials said last night they expected the Security Council to extend the mandate for one week, the second such extension.

The battle at the Security Council, which also involves major unresolved disagreements over whether sanctions should be slapped on Sudan, has dismayed human rights advocates. ''It's not just that people are dying. People are dying amidst a genocide that will ultimately claim more lives than the genocide in Rwanda," said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who has taken a leave of absence to produce some of the most comprehensive estimates of death tolls in Sudan. ''We're still arguing at the Security Council about where the genocidaire will be tried. But the point is to stop genocide."

In addition to the tug of war over the court are major disagreements about whether the resolution should prohibit Sudan from selling its oil, and whether a travel ban and seizure of assets should be imposed on key Sudanese government figures implicated in the killings. Russia, which sells arms to Sudan, and China, a major consumer of Sudanese oil, both adamantly oppose such sanctions.

One element the 15 nations on the Security Council appear to agree on is that a 10,000-member UN peacekeeper force should be deployed as soon as possible to monitor the newly signed peace agreement between Sudan's government in Khartoum and the rebels in the south. Two US officials said yesterday that those troops could also be rerouted to Darfur, a region in Western Sudan where government-backed militias have forced more than 2 million people from their homes and killed and raped tens of thousands of people in attacks that the US government has termed genocide.

But other UN diplomats said the current draft of the US-sponsored resolution still leaves it unclear whether peacekeepers in the south will have the mandate to protect civilians in Darfur. For nearly two years, the Sudanese government has been accused of arming Arab militias that have destroyed villages of African tribes who are not seen as loyal to the government. Sudanese helicopters have also been spotted bombing villages, according to news reports.

But only 2,000 poorly equipped African Union troops are currently on the ground to monitor Darfur, an area roughly the size of France. Their mission is limited to observing the conditions there, and their powers to protect civilians are severely constrained. Insecurity and lawlessness have become so widespread that yesterday the UN announced that it had withdrawn all its international staff to the regional capital.

In January, UN inquiry recommended that 51 suspected Sudanese war criminals be immediately referred to the International Criminal Court. Europeans seized on the recommendation to try to get the United States to accept the role of the court, and have rebuffed US efforts to send peacekeeping troops without an agreement on how to prosecute the criminals. ''The Europeans are holding the peacekeeping resolution hostage," said one Washington-based US official involved in the impasse. ''They are turning the debate to make us look bad, but they are the ones preventing the peacekeepers from going in."

But international justice advocates and some European allies blame the United States for the long delay in action, arguing that the US refusal to be flexible about the International Criminal Court has hampered efforts to rally other nations behind tough sanctions.

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