TONY Blair has abandoned plans to send British troops to Sudan, in a move which marks a significant softening of the government’s previously hard-line approach to the crisis in the Darfur region.
While Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was touring a refugee camp in the region yesterday in advance of a meeting with the Sudanese president, Downing Street was busy denying that it had ever considered sending a British force to Darfur.
The U-
turn comes five days before the United Nations deadline for Khartoum to disarm the Arab Janjaweed militia, who have terrorised hundreds of thousands of people in the region, or face economic and diplomatic sanctions.
Mr Blair had previously warned that he ruled out "absolutely nothing" and the head of the British Army talked of sending a force of 5,000 soldiers.
But yesterday, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said: "At no point were we considering a UK military deployment. We are not in a position where we are considering any UK deployment. We are supporting the African Union deployment [of monitors and peacekeepers].
"We are working with the government of Sudan. There has to be a political solution to this, and the government of Sudan has to be a part of that."
The Ministry of Defence also confirmed that talk of direct British military intervention was a non-starter: "There are no plans to send troops," a spokeswoman said.
The language used by Mr Straw on his whistle-stop tour of Darfur yesterday also indicated that Britain was preparing to give Khartoum more time rather than pressing for sanctions when the UN deadline runs out on Monday.
Despite reports from human rights groups and aid agencies of fresh fighting in the region and attacks on refugees, Mr Straw said he believed that the Sudanese government was trying to meet UN demands and that the last thing Britain wanted was to be in conflict with it.
Mr Straw, paying a brief visit to the well-organised Abu Shouk refugee camp in northern Darfur, said the camps appeared to be safer, but he voiced concern about surrounding areas and villages, which one of his officials described as "bandit country" in which "the Janjaweed are doing what they want, where they want, when they want, to the non-Arabs".
Mr Straw said: "I recognise that the government of Sudan have made progress, especially in humanitarian access and camp safety and security within the camps, but people are obviously still very anxious and nervous about whether they will be safe when they go back to their villages."
He later met the president, Omar el-Bashir, to urge an end to continuing atrocities. He said afterwards: "My core message to the president was that the UK’s interests and the interests of the international community are the same as those of the president and government of Sudan, which is that our collective interest is to see a safe, secure and prosperous Sudan able to live at peace with itself amongst all its states and many tribes.
"But I also said to the president that the government of Sudan had to help us to help them, and that meant fulfilling the obligations imposed on them by the United Nations and voluntarily accepted by them."
The Foreign Secretary was surrounded by cheering refugees when he flew to visit the Abu Shouk camp near El Fasher. Described by one British official as the "Hilton" of the camps, it is home to about 57,000 people forced to flee their villages after a campaign of violence by the Janjaweed.
Mr Straw said it was clear that the refugees were too frightened to return to their homes because of the continuing attacks by militiamen. "I spoke to many of the refugees in the camp and got from them a sense of their fear as a result both of what had happened to them and their families, and the killings they had witnessed."
Mr Straw said he had also spoken to members of the African Union’s monitoring mission to Darfur. "What I understand is that there has not been aerial bombardment since the end of June, that the ceasefire as a formal ceasefire is broadly holding, but that atrocities have continued, and that in itself is creating a great deal of fear for many sectors of the population across Darfur."
He said that he would be reporting to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, ahead of the forthcoming crucial meeting of the Security Council which will decide whether the Sudanese government is doing enough to resolve the crisis.
"It will be Kofi Annan’s report to the Security Council at the end of this week which will be crucial in determining whether the government of Sudan has done enough to meet the obligations imposed on it by the resolution passed at the end of last month," he said.
While the Security Council has left open the prospect of sanctions if the Sudanese do not comply, British officials admit there is little appetite on the council for "heavy duty" measures such as an embargo on oil exports.
Mr Straw denied that the international community was "going soft" on Sudan, but acknowledged: "This is a very imperfect situation".
Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said that it had secured fresh evidence of attacks on refugees in West Darfur, and it warned that thousands of people are waiting for floodwaters to abate so that they can cross into neighbouring Chad.
