US Senate blocks bill to pressure Sudan

WASHINGTON - The Bush Administration and business interests have been accused of undermining efforts to pressure the Sudanese Government to stop the killing in Darfur.

The United States Senate has blocked a bill that passed in Congress endorsing state legislation that forces publicly owned entities to sell holdings in companies with substantial business with Sudan, or sell Khartoum weapons.

Campaigners blame the White House, saying the long-delayed draft the Foreign Relations Committee put forward last week removed a clause known as Section 11 that would have required publicly owned entities to dump stock.

"If the federal Government is for divestment outright, they should publicly state so," said Jason Miller, a US-based Darfur campaigner. "If they are against divestment, they should publicly state so. If there's some middle ground where they agree with certain types of divestment but not others, they should have been open to compromise ... Instead, they gave us complete ambiguity."

The half dozen states that have passed such measures, and the 15 more said to be studying them, now face the prospect of legal action from a business pressure group. The National Foreign Trade Council has already sued the state of Illinois, which has enacted the most sweeping measure.

California has become the latest state to draft such a bill.

Washington was one of the first to identify the scale of the atrocities in Darfur, with then Secretary of State Colin Powell declaring in September 2004 that "genocide has been committed" in the southwestern Sudanese province. Since then, however, efforts have stalled.

Bush yesterday said a special envoy would try to end the violence. The envoy is due to be named at the UN today.

- INDEPENDENT