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 Top Sudanese officials targeted for UN sanctions**********BREAKING NEWS***
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UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Sudan's interior and defense ministers and its national intelligence chief are among 17 people the U.N. Security Council should punish for blocking peace in Darfur, according to a secret list compiled for the council by U.N. experts.
The list, submitted to the 15-nation council in December, is contained in a confidential annex to a report by the four outside experts and has never been made public. A copy of the annex, first published by the Financial Times, was obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Idriss Deby, the head of state of neighboring Chad, are among the names on a second list of five names that the experts said should be considered for possible future designation as sanctions targets, according to the annex.
The council's Sudan sanctions committee "should consider designating individuals against whom the sanctions should be applied," the expert panel said in its report.
The council voted 11 months ago to impose sanctions such as asset and travel freezes on those fueling the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, but has taken no action to impose them on any individual involved in the conflict.
China, which relies on Sudan for oil and opposes U.N. sanctions as a matter of policy, and Qatar, a fellow Muslim state, have both pushed for a go-slow approach to punitive action against Sudanese officials.
NAMES NOT YET DISCUSSED
"The (Sudan sanctions) committee has not yet discussed the names on the list," said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity because the committee's deliberations are not public. "Some members are just not yet ready to discuss them, but we expect them to be ready to discuss them soon."
Among those the expert panel recommended for sanctions were Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha, Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Abduraheem Mohammed Hussein and Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, the chief of Sudan's Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
All three men were put on the list because they failed to take appropriate action to carry out the Sudanese government's commitment to disarm the Arab militia groups attacking non-Arab villagers in Darfur, the experts said.
Others on the experts' list include four senior officers in the Sudanese armed forces, three Sudanese security or police officials, two militia leaders and three commanders of the Sudan Liberation Army, the main rebel group in Darfur.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese have been killed and more than 2 million driven from their homes and herded into grim camps during more than three years of fighting in the remote area. The conflict began when non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing the government of neglect and repression.
The Khartoum government is accused of responding to the rebellion by backing Arab militias as proxy fighters to kill, rape and plunder in areas the rebels came from.
The government denies the charges.
But the expert panel said it found "widespread violations of international humanitarian law on the part of all parties to the Darfur conflict -- Sudanese government officials, rebel leaders and leaders of the Arab militias the government relies on as proxy fighters."
"All parties, to varying degrees, have committed torture, outrages upon personal dignity and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment against those who are not, or are no longer, participating in the conflict," the report said.
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Wasil Ali
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تويتر
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