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Re: على ذمة -الغارديان-ضربات جوية تستهدف مطارات عسكرية سودانية. (Re: محمود الدقم)
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No 10 is stressing that the prime minister would prefer to act in concert with other security council members, but Sudan's defenders at the UN, led by China, are likely to resist any resolution backed by force. Asked whether the UK and the US would attempt to rally a "coalition of the willing" against Sudan in the event of a security council impasse, a Downing Street source said: "We'd have to judge that if we failed."
The initiative for such tough action is being driven by Mr Blair himself, often in the face of scepticism in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The MoD in particular distanced itself from the idea yesterday. "There are absolutely no plans for any UK military action at all in Sudan or the Darfur region of Sudan," a senior defence source said. But British military officials did not exclude the possibility that the US had contingency plans to strike Sudanese airfields.
Mr Blair is said by his aides to believe the ethnic cleansing to be a defining moral issue. "The prime minister believes in a values-driven foreign policy and believes you have to evenly apply those values to have any credibility. He sees Darfur as a test of the international community's commitment to its own values," a Downing Street source said.
The prospect of a no-fly zone was welcomed by the independent International Crisis Group thinktank. "The government in Khartoum is using its air force to bomb its own civilians and to resupply its troops and allied militias killing its own people. That's a pretty good reason for a no-fly zone," Andrew Stroehlein, the ICG's media director, said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2044281,00...tml#article_continue
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