Negotiating with genocidal despots

Washington Post:

Sometime in the next few weeks, a special envoy of President Bush plans to meet with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose government sheltered Osama bin Laden and pursued a scorched-earth policy in southern Sudan that resulted in more than 2 million deaths.

Bashir's government has been accused by Bush of participating in a "genocide" in Darfur, the only U.S. government use of such a strong accusation. Yet Richard S. Williamson's visit to Khartoum follows a series of direct contacts by senior Bush administration officials with the Sudanese president, including Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Rice's deputies, and several special presidential envoys.

Bush has spoken to or exchanged letters with Bashir on numerous occasions, underscoring how White House policy has departed from his pointed public call to shun talks with radical tyrants and dictators. His appointees have also pursued aggressive diplomacy with North Korea and Libya and have even conducted limited business with Cuba, Syria and Iran.

In the case of Sudan, experts are deeply divided about how much the administration's engagement has improved conditions in a country beset for decades by mass violence and famine. It has at least provoked charges of hypocrisy, because Bush recently accused those advocating talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other radical figures of "appeasement."

"The Bush administration has spent years not only talking at very senior levels with one of the world's worst tyrants, who is responsible for genocide, but also reportedly offered the regime major concessions in exchange for minor steps and rolled out the red carpet for some of its most reprehensible officials," said Susan E. Rice, who handled Africa policy in the Clinton administration and is a top adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the administration has been willing to talk with both Sudan and Iran -- though in the case of Iran, only if it halts uranium enrichment. "We enter into discussions with countries where we have leverage to achieve results," he said. " In the case of Sudan, they want better relations with the United States and we want to stop a genocide."

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I would say that in the case of Sudan it is not working out so well. The negotiations with the Norks were somewhat successful because we had the cooperation of its most important trading partners. In Sudan China is not playing the helpful role it played in North Korea. That is because the Norks are a troublesome drain on China where as Sudan had resources China wants and needs. We therefore have less leverage than their apparent to desire to placate us would indicate. They are in fact just playing us so they can continue their aggression against everyone whose property adjoins theirs. They have demonstrated on numerous occasions that Bashir's word is no good.

BTW, that quote from Susan Rice above is an admission against interest for the Obama campaign which has been critical of the Bush administration for not talking to these people. Which is it Barack? Are you trying to con the voters by implying the Bush administration is not negotiating with the despots? Or, do you think your gift of gab is such that you will be more persuasive? If it is the latter, your hubris is showing.

It is interesting that when Obama is picking people to talk to, he omits the two worst genocidal despots in Africa, Bashir of Sudan and Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Aren't they the most active practitioners of genocide on the globe today. Do African lives not count?