President Bush to Announce New Sanctions on Sudan Over Darfur

April 17, 2007 — -- In a speech this morning at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., President Bush will announce a new set of sanctions on Sudan in an attempt to pressure the Khartoum government to allow a peacekeeping force into the turbulent Darfur region.

A text of those sanctions is expected to be circulated within the U.N. Security Council soon thereafter.

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Bush's envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, offered a preview into the sanctions.

State Department officials confirmed today that the sanctions to be announced by Bush would be very similar to those that Natsios had outlined last week.

Natsios testified that the United States would seek to place sanctions on 29 Sudanese companies, some of which control parts of Sudan's lucrative oil revenues. The United States already has in place sanctions on 130 Sudanese companies, he said.

Officials Face Sanctions

Sources tell ABC News those sanctions will be similar in nature to the ones placed on Iran and North Korea in recent months. They will utilize the same clauses in the Patriot Act that allow the Treasury Department to cut Iranian and North Korean companies off from the international system. The existing sanctions on Sudanese companies will also be upgraded to take advantage of these new powers.

Natsios also testified that sanctions would be placed on several Sudanese government officials, although he did not specify which officials would be affected. He added that similar sanctions would be placed on one "obstructionist" rebel leader.

These sanctions, Natsios said, will include travel bans and asset freezes.

Sources tell ABC News that the personal sanctions will target three Sudanese government officials, but officials stressed they would not target Sudan's President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir.

Last-Ditch Negotiating Efforts Fail

The Sudanese government has resisted negotiated attempts to allow a peacekeeping force into the country, saying that it will treat such a force as an invasion of its territory. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan negotiated an agreement in the fall whereby Sudan signed on to a three-stage deployment of a hybrid force consisting of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers.

Sudan has since resisted attempts to implement the last two stages in the deal.

Natsios told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that the United States had agreed to hold off on sanctions by two weeks to four weeks in order for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to solve the crisis by current U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to progress.

Sudan said Monday that it had accepted parts of the Kofi Annan deal, however the State Department responded immediately that the Sudanese response was inadequate. A State Department spokesman told reporters Monday that Sudan was demanding too many caveats on the full deployment of the peacekeeping force.

In a twist of irony, the Save Darfur Coalition, which has pressed for more action by the United States to resolve the crisis in Darfur, has organized a protest Thursday morning outside of the museum where Bush will announce the new sanctions.

A spokesman from the group says about 100 people are expected to attend.