Appeal to Merkel: G8 statement on Sudan must be touched up before Heiligendamm!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) is disappointed by the statement of the G8 foreign ministers on Darfur and appealed urgently on Thursday to the G8 chair and EU president, Angela Merkel, to touch this statement up before Heiligendamm. "It is evidence of incapacity that the foreign ministers with their resolutions yesterday in Potsdam have announced no concrete measures to put an end to the genocide in Darfur. Thus they have ignored promises which they gave at the last summit meeting in St Petersburg in July 2006”, criticised the GfbV Sudan expert, Ulrich Delius, sharply. They have neither threatened sanctions to increase the political pressure on Sudan, nor have they considered setting up humanitarian corridors, nor a no-fly zone to ensure a better provision and protection for the civilian population.

In St Petersburg they gave the assurance that they would "do everything humanly possible to send a UN peace-keeping force to Darfur”, but there is no sign in the statement made yesterday of any clear promise. "Germany’s G8 chair is very disappointing because she has only produced a collection of non-committing appeals and empty declarations of concern which are of not the slightest interest to anyone in Khartoum”, said Delius and drew attention to the fact that Merkel had spoken out at the jubilee summit of the EU in Berlin at the end of March 2007 for sharper sanctions against Sudan.

In Sudan the situation has deteriorated, reported the GfbV. In the first five months of the year 2007 a further 100,000 people have been driven out in Darfur. The Sudanese government has still not given up its rejection of the sending of a UN peace-keeping force to Darfur. There are no signs that the Sudanese government is more prepared to cooperate. It states in public its willingness for peace, yet it continues to provide arms for the militia, who systematically frighten and terrorise the civilian population. The Sudanese government employs ever more perfidious methods of winning time in order to create facts in the west of the country with the expulsion or destruction of large parts of the population.

Traditionally the statement published yesterday by the foreign ministers and the chair of the G8 states forms the basis of the final statement of the summit. So as a rule the heads of state merely emphasise the statement which has previously been made by the foreign ministers.