Despite Ongoing Human Rights Abuses in Darfur

The Los Angeles Times recently revealed that the U.S. has quietly forged a close intelligence partnership with Sudan despite the government's role in the mass killings in Darfur. Charles Snyder, the U.S. State Department Senior Representative on Sudan, defends the Bush administration's policy on Sudan.

We talk with Charles Snyder, the U.S. State Department Senior Representative on Sudan, about the report.

• Charles Snyder, the U.S. State Department Senior Representative on Sudan.

• Ben Elberger, a student at Stanford who is part of the group STAND, Students Taking Action Now: Darfur.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue the latest discussion on Sudan, with the Medecins Sans Frontieres’ report on hundreds of women raped in Darfur. We are joined by Nicholas Detorrente, Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders here in New York. Charles Snyder, US State Department Senior Representative on the Sudan, is on the line with us on the phone in Washington. Charles Snyder, I wanted to stick with you for a moment. Months ago, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, came out further even than the United Nations in talking about the genocide that was being carried out by Sudan in Darfur. But then The Los Angeles Times did a report about a month ago that the CIA had sent an executive jet to Khartoum to ferry the chief of Sudan’s intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings, sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration. It was the Sudanese intelligence chief, Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh, who has been accused by members of Congress by directing military attacks against the civilians in Darfur, had regular contacts with Osama bin Laden during the 90s, that the US is now working with, so the government working with Darfur, with the Sudanese government. So presumably, you would have very high contacts to deal with what is taking place right now, for example, the latest report on the rapes.

CHARLES SNYDER: No, I mean, we have actually protested to him as well through other channels, basically saying to him, this is an outrage. But there's been this misimpression that somehow, you know, we are overlooking some of these humanitarian concerns, we are overlooking the genocide because of this intelligence cooperation, and that's simply not so. I mean, that was the sine qua non of this – the president allowing us to even negotiate with them way back in 2001 was they have to begin to cooperate on counterterrorism. That's a necessity, and they were cooperating with us at quite a high level before we called them on genocide. So, we didn't hesitate on the humanitarian side and on the, frankly, the human rights side to act when we saw it as necessary. We made it clear to them the intelligence cooperation is its own separate entity, and it's the minimum for any kind of continued progress with us. So we have not at all pulled back our punches. Certainly, Secretary Powell didn't pull his punches when he called it genocide. We have not at all pulled our punches based on what they're doing with us on the intelligence side. And I just wanted to correct that misimpression. It just isn’t so. And in fact our access to people like Gosh is enhanced by this, and we are making demands on him, which is allowing us to clarify the situation in a number of ways. For instance, one of the problems we’ve got, and we agree 100% with Medecins Sans Frontieres, if they turn over this report, what they will wind up doing is using the names and the people and of the women themselves that have actually been raped and they will charge them with crimes. This is just not acceptable and outrageous. And we’re saying that to them. If you want to have anyone believe there is any hope for Sudanese justice, if you want to turn off the international justice, you have go to prove to us you will arrest and prosecute some of these people, not prosecute the victims.

AMY GOODMAN: What about sanctions?

CHARLES SNYDER: The sanctions, you know -- we have sanctioned Sudan every way from Sunday and have for years, going back into the Clinton administration. Our ability to act unilaterally on these kinds of things simply is not effective in the modern world. That's the reason when we called it genocide, we took it to the security council, hoping that the security council would join us and call this genocide and said, as you know, as the commission of inquiry went out and it found high crimes, war crimes, things approaching genocide but did not call it genocide. And that leaves us unable and frustrated in many ways to impose the kind of sanctions that we would like to see imposed in this situation: truly universal, truly effective sanctions. You need the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans and frankly, even the rest of the Africans to join us in that, and the security council in this commission of inquiry simply did not find it to be genocide. We still disagree. But again, it's an interdependent world. When we act alone, we’re important, but we're not able to squeeze the regime like this as effectively as we should be able to and would like to be able to.