Bush: Conditions in Darfur are ‘unacceptable’

“The brutal treatment of innocent civilians in Darfur is unacceptable,” Bush said at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “And we’re not going to back down.”

Bush blamed Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for the “evil we are now seeing in Sudan.” Al-Bashir has blocked a variety of international agreements calling for a United Nations peacekeeping force to bolster a contingent of 7,000 African Union troops in Darfur.

“President Bashir’s record has been to promise cooperation while finding new ways to subvert and obstruct the [United Nations’] efforts to bring peace to his country,” Bush said. “The time for promises is over. President Bashir must act.”

Bush warned that if al-Bashir does not comply in “a short period of time,” the United States will tighten existing economic sanctions on Sudan and add new ones.

“We’re also are looking at what steps the international community could take to deny Sudan’s government the ability to fly its military aircraft over Darfur,” Bush said. “And if we do not begin to see signs of good faith and commitments, we will hear calls for even sterner measures.”

Although Bush said al-Bashir was down to his “last chance,” Sen. Russ Feingold, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, dismissed this warning as the latest in a long line of “empty statements and hollow promises.”

“We are long past the point of warnings, especially since so many have been ignored while hundreds of thousands have died and millions have been displaced,” the Wisconsin Democrat said.

But Bush, who compared the “evil” genocide in Darfur to the Holocaust, said his warnings will not go on forever.

“Our patience is limited,” he said after touring an exhibit of photos of Darfur. “No one who sees these pictures can doubt that genocide is the only word for what is happening in Darfur — and that we have a moral obligation to stop it.”

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