Bush slaps new sanctions on Sudan

US president George Bush will impose new economic sanctions against Sudan and call for a United Nations resolution to make the country stop stalling international efforts to halt the bloodshed in Darfur, top administration officials said today.

The president plans to announce the punitive actions today because he believes the situation in Darfur has worsened, the two officials, who spoke anonymously, say.

The new action will stiffen enforcement of existing sanctions, bar more companies in Sudan from using the US financial system, and clamp down on individuals suspected of violence in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million people driven from their homes in four years of fighting.

The president is also directing secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed UN resolution to strengthen international pressure on the hardline Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir.

In announcing the sanctions at the White House, Bush will says that Bashir’s actions over the past few weeks "follow a long pattern of promising co-operation while finding new methods of obstruction", according to a draft of the remarks.

Bush signalled his readiness to impose additional sanctions in a speech on April 18, but stopped short of imposing them because he said he wanted to give the UN secretary general time to find a diplomatic solution to ending the four-year crisis in Sudan.

Bush said the Sudanese government must allow UN troops, police and civilian workers into the region, remove its opposition to a 22,000-strong joint United Nations-African Union force for Darfur, stop supporting violent militias and let humanitarian aid reach the people of Darfur.

Over the weekend Bashir repeated his opposition to the 22,000-strong force for Darfur, having agreed only to a much smaller force of no more than 3,000 UN troops.

The new sanctions target an additional 31 companies, most owned or controlled by the Sudanese government, from the US banking system.

The US also is targeting three individuals. The sanctions will cut them off from the US financial system and prevent them from doing business with US companies or individuals. Two of the Sudanese individuals have alleged links to the janjaweed militias. The third is a senior rebel leader suspected of contributing to bloodshed and human rights abuses in Darfur.

The UN resolution Bush is seeking would apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government in Khartoum. It also would seek to impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan, ban Sudan’s government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur and strengthen the US ability to monitor and report any abuses.

The bloody conflict – which the Bush administration has labelled genocide - began when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government. The Sudanese government is accused of responding by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads, blamed for indiscriminate killing. The government denies the charges.