By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, February 13 – When Sudan denied entry to UN sanctions expert Schbley, saying he was on a blacklist due to work on the UN's Somalia / Eritrea sanctions panel, Colombia's Ambassador Nestor Osorio who then chaired the UN Security Council's Sudan Sanctions Committee told Inner City Press it was an “outrage” that would be reversed.
Now with Colombia off the Security Council and Argentina having come on and taken over the chair for the Sudan Sanctions Committee, Schbley is still blocked.
This week began closed door consultations on a draft resolution to extend the experts' mandate. Inner City Press has exclusively obtained the draft and is putting it online here. At Operative Paragraph 11, the draft
“Calls on the Government of Sudan to remove all restrictions, limitations and bureaucratic impediments imposed on the work of the Panel of Experts, including by issuing timely multiple-entry visas to all members of the Panel of Experts for the duration of its mandate, and by waiving the requirement of Darfur travel permits for said Panel members.”
Some on the Council see this as going too far, into the sovereignty of Sudan. “Visas are a sovereign decision,” a non-Western Council member told Inner City Press on February 12. Another said, “The US throws drafts like this down and expects us to just accept them.”
A third Council member noted that the US has extended the time to negotiate the d
draft. But where will it come out? The draft also has the Security Council
“Further deploring the forcible detention and intimidation by the National Intelligence and Security Services of members of the Panel of Experts, condemning the simulated attack by Sudanese army helicopters on a UNAMID patrol to which the Panel of Experts arms expert was attached; and deploring the Government of Sudan’s refusal to grant admittance to a member of the Panel of Experts, as set out in paragraphs 20 to 24 of the Final Report of the Panel of Experts.”
Getting more specific, the draft cites Protection of Civilians, the topic of the Security Council's all-day, late-night debate on February 12:
“Urges the Government of Sudan to respond to the Committee requests on measures put in place to protect civilians in various parts of Darfur, including those affected by new displacements; investigations conducted and accountability measures undertaken for killings of civilians and perpetrators of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law (including notably the killings of civilians in Abu Zereiga in June 2011, Hashaba in August 2012 and Sigili in November 2012)”
Meanwhile some report that already indicted President Omar al Bashir plans to travel not only to Chad but also Libya. Watch this site.
