This is something I don’t want to get overlooked today, gien some of the other news that’s happening elsewhere.
DARFUR, Sudan, July 21 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded and received an apology Thursday after Sudanese security guards manhandled staff members and press accompanying her on her journey to the country.
The incidents occurred while Rice was meeting with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir. Sudanese officials shoved U.S. journalists away from the Bashir meeting, grabbed a tape from a reporter and slammed the wooden doors to his palace in their faces.
Some U.S. officials were also blocked for several minutes before the Sudanese agreed to allow Rice and aides in. The media was later allowed to witness briefly the talks.
This story sort of downplays what really happened. Courtesy of Austin Bay, we get a more detailed look at the “U.S. officials” who were blocked, and how they were blocked.
Twice, Sudanese guards’ hostility toward members of Rice’s entourage devolved into shouts and shoving.
As Rice’s motorcade arrived at the residence, armed guards slammed the gate shut before three vehicles could get in, including those carrying Rice’s interpreter and other State Department officials who were supposed to attend her meeting with el-Bashir.
After protests, the officials were eventually allowed in. But guards repeatedly pushed and pulled Rice senior adviser Jim Wilkinson, and at one point he was shoved into a wall.
“Diplomacy 101 says you don’t rough your guests up,” Wilkinson said later.
After that, the Sudanese thugs started roughing up the accompanying media.
El-Bashir’s guards elbowed Americans and tried to rip a tape away from a U.S. reporter. At another point, Rice’s interpreter and some other aides accompanying her were blocked at a gate.
Ambassador Khidair Haroun Ahmed, head of the Sudanese mission in Washington, attempted to smooth over the situation. “Please accept our apologies,” he told reporters and Rice aides. “This is not our policy.”
But apparently it was, considering what happened next to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
Shortly after the first apology, another scuffle broke out when NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell tried to ask el-Bashir a question about his involvement with alleged atrocities.
“Why should the U.S. believe the Sudanese government will stop the killing when the government is still supporting the militia?” Mitchell asked, before guards grabbed her and muscled her toward the rear of the room as State Department officials shouted at the guards to leave her alone.
At least Mitchell’s crew was physically forced out of the room by el-Bashir’s goons. Only after the US delegation was on the plane and in the air, and after Secretary Rice voiced her displeasure in very certain terms was there a second apology.
This is the regime that is systematically committing genocide, attempting to wipe Sudan clean of the non-Arab Christians and animists in the south of the country. The government has also provided an open conduit for international terrorism for at least a decade. This incident, where the guards of a foreign leader actually laid hands on Americans in a diplomatic entourage demonstrates once again that the Sudanese government has no regard at all for the opinions, or the diplomatic efforts, of other nations.
They need to get the message far more forcefully that what they have been doing is wrong and that none of us will tolerate it anymore. Whatever it takes to support the decimated south – guns, funds, troop support – we should be willing to provide quickly and openly. Omar el-Bashir is a vile and corrupt murderer and he nees to be held to account for his actions.
Perhaps now that one of the MSM’s own has been roughly treated, the Sudan will get some attention in the national press.
