This is your credibility. This is your credibility on WMD.

If genocide happens, and the only powerful people to notice it are the same people who invaded Iraq to secure WMD that cannot be proved to have existed in several years, is it genocide?

Salih Booker, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Africa Action, attributed the inaction to Security Council members' own interests and to a loss of U.S. moral authority in the world body in the wake of now discredited claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

''China is the single largest investor in Sudan's oil industry; Russia has significant arms deals with Khartoum, and both countries want to avoid scrutiny of their own internal wars against various ethnic communities,'' Booker said in a Foreign Policy in Focus commentary. ''Pakistan and Algeria have either ideological or political interests in helping the government in Sudan. All four abstained.''

Added Booker, ''Once upon a time, Washington could have exercised its clout as the most powerful nation in the world and handily won over the support of these recalcitrant members. But now, the country that cried wolf (over Iraq) has lost the moral authority it needs to rally its global neighbors.''

Sudanese officials have countered U.S. claims of genocide by saying that Washington presented a false dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and now is presenting a dossier against Sudan, another Arab state with oil, he said.

''Sadly, such cynical skepticism resonates in large parts of the world,'' said Booker.

Abid Islam, writing for OneWorld.

| Posted by Wilson at 11:09 Central | TrackBack
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