Qatar, the UN Security Council's only Arab member, disclosed today that experts hired by the United Nations had recommended sanctions against top Sudanese officials for atrocities in Darfur.
But with the United Nations trying to convince Sudan to allow UN peacekeepers into its Darfur region, it is unlikely China or Russia would allow sanctions in the near future, especially against senior officials.
Qatar's UN ambassador, Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, an ally of the Khartoum government, castigated the experts, who are monitoring abuses and an arms embargo.
He revealed they had named "people of the highest authority," indicating President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was on the still-secret list.
Even Britain's UN ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, said sanctions should not take priority over peace and stability in the lawless region where some 200,000 people have died since 2003, 2.5 million have been driven out of their homes and countless women have been raped.
But US Ambassador John Bolton said sanctions threats might help win Sudan's approval for a UN force in Darfur, although Washington was cautious in April in putting embargoes on any senior Sudanese official when the council imposed them on a Sudanese army commander, among others.
Relations have deteriorated sharply in recent months between Khartoum and Washington. On Friday, the State Department said Sudan appeared to balk at granting a visa to the new US special envoy, Andrew Natsios, and was restricting the movement of all US officials to Khartoum.
Sudan, which said the travel restrictions followed similar ones placed on Sudanese officials in the United States, has flatly rejected a UN force for Darfur, saying its presence there would amount to "colonialism." Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to launch a holy war against the proposed peacekeepers, calling them "crusaders masked as UN troops," according to a video posted on the Internet on Friday.
The Security Council has authorized up to 22,500 troops and police in Darfur to absorb and replace the 7,000 poorly funded African Union troops. The European Commission in Brussels wants to send its president, Jose Manuel Barroso, and a top aid official to Sudan to try to persuade Bashir to allow the UN peacekeepers in.
If Khartoum persists in its objections to any UN force in Darfur, the EU is likely to advocate other measures, such as keeping the mission under the African Union force while adding a UN component, said Africa analyst Tom Cargill at the Chatham House think tank in London.