Jewish groups welcome Darfur announcement

Jewish groups welcomed President Bush’s announcement of expanded sanctions against Sudan until it allows peacekeepers to police the Darfur genocide. Bush, following up on a warning he delivered to mark Holocaust commemoration day last month, said Tuesday that the United States was adding companies and individuals to the sanctions list, and is making it a crime for Americans to deal with the sanctioned.Bush also announced a new effort to tighten sanctions on the international level through the U.N. Security Council. His special envoy, Andrew Natsios, said he was making progress to persuade China to join in the sanctions. China, Sudan’s biggest oil client, has been the principal recalcitrant until now in achieving international consensus on ending the killings in Darfur led by militias allied with the government.Ruth Messinger, who heads the American Jewish World Service, the lead Darfur advocacy group, said the sanctions were welcome and overdue.”The real issue for the Jewish, American and world communities is to hold the president to his concluding statement that he will no longer avert his eyes,” she said, “that he act to get a larger, more robust peacekeeping force on the ground to stop the ongoing violence.”Echoed Hadar Susskind, the Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, another group leading activism on the issue, “This is an issue that isn’t done until the killing stops.”Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of Reform’s Religious Action Center, said follow-up was critical. “Strong American leadership remains indispensable towards stopping the genocide,” he said.The American Jewish Committee also welcomed the announcement. A number of Jewish groups were invited to join a confidential teleconference later Tuesday between Natsios and Darfur activists.