Cross-posted at Globe for Darfur

Amb. (ret.) Lawrence Rossin, Senior International Coordinator at the Save Darfur Coalition, is responsible for designing and leading implementation of the Coalition’s outreach to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur. Rossin joined the Coalition after serving as Assistant Secretary General and Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and as part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. He has also served in a number of diplomatic positions in the U.S. Department of State.

This week, EU and Russian leaders will meet in Samara for the bi-annual EU-Russian Summit.  They have an important agenda: gas and oil supply shocks, reducing CO2 emissions targets, human rights issues, Kosovo, Iran and the Middle East. 

Worthy matters indeed.  But where is ending the genocide in Darfur?  Why has the EU failed to put this on the agenda?  If the situation in Darfur is “unacceptable,” as Chancellor Merkel said in Washington on April 30, then shouldn’t the German Presidency want to raise it with Russia, given Moscow’s role in abetting the genocide and potential to help end it?

China’s ties to Sudan are getting an increasing amount of international attention, and rightly so.  Its cozy political, economic and military relations with Khartoum have provided President al-Bashir protection and resources he uses to pursue killing in Darfur.  Even being generous, those ties contradicted whatever “quiet diplomacy” Beijing may pursue.   Pressure on Beijing should grow until China wields its influence to end the genocide.

Russia’s role gets a lot less attention.  It deserves more.  It too enjoys good political relations with Khartoum.  It too has run interference for Sudan in the Security Council.  And, as Amnesty International reported last week, Moscow too has an active arms supply relationship with Sudan.  This violates Resolutions 1556 and 1591, as documented both by this Amnesty report and by the UN’s own Panel of Experts in its report leaked to the New York Times in late April. 

Russia rejected the Amnesty report immediately, but offered no contrary argumentation.  It knows that the arms it is supplying are being used to pursue the genocide in Darfur – it was among those Security Council members who blocked the release of the Panel of Experts report which documents that.  An inconvenient report – fortunately, someone in the UN system did the right thing and leaked the report.

So, the EU could have much to discuss with Russia on Darfur.  Ending those violations of the UN arms embargo.  And lobbying Russia to support tough mandatory targeted sanctions, as are now being proposed by the British government in the Security Council. 

Germany and many EU members say that EU sanctions alone won’t work – that prior UN sanctions action is needed to make EU sanctions meaningful.  But the EU is doing nothing to demonstrate it means what it says.  One wonders what the Chancellor had in mind when at her joint press conference with President Bush on April 30, she said:

"And let me tell you that we have been talking at greater length also about the situation in Darfur, which we consider to be totally unacceptable, and that we need to do everything we can in order to help the people there on the ground who suffer immensely because we have not made progress so far, and that we ought to use all of our possibilities in order to achieve progress also in the United Nations."

Did she mean it when she said, in the joint US-EU statement at the end of the Summit:

"If no progress on a political solution or on the implementation of the hybrid-mission is achieved soon, we agree to support initiatives by the UNSC to work on a new UNSCR that imposes multilateral sanctions against individuals and Sudanese entities, extends the arms embargo and establishes the capacity to monitor and report on offensive flights that are inconsistent with the UNSCR 1591."

Certainly, Russia will not become helpful in ending the genocide of its own accord.  Hiding behind the difficulty of making the UN work, when countries like China and Russia hold strong hands, is evidently easier than working on those countries to get them to support what one claims to want.  The EU, just like the United States, needs to launch insistent diplomacy now, lest it like Russia be complicit in prolonging Darfur’s agony.

It seems likely that the opportunity Samara presented will go unused.  But then President Bush and Chancellor Merkel must use the G8 Summit in early June in Germany to make good on their tough Washington words about Darfur.  At that Summit, they should press Russia to work with them to end the killing, and then lead a real G8 commitment for the people of Darfur, to stop talking and start acting.  That’s really long overdue.