UK's Blair urges world to send troops into Sudan
Source: Reuters
LONDON, March 15 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday urged the world to get tough with Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, saying troops should be sent into the country to stop chaos in Darfur from spreading. Defending Britain's role in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Blair said global leaders had to be prepared to intervene wherever they thought security was being threatened. "I would today take a far tougher line on Sudan," he said in an interview with Sky television. "I don't think we are able to send troops in but I certainly think the international community should be." "I think it should be saying to the Bashir government: 'If you're not prepared to comply with what the United Nations is saying, we're going to get progressively harder with you.'," said Blair, who is expected to step down in a few months after a decade in power. Britain and the United States are increasingly frustrated by Sudan's refusal to accept a joint force of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 and more than 2.5 million displaced by the conflict. Britain's ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday the U.N. Security Council should impose sanctions on Sudan after Bashir put conditions on U.N. plans to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur. The United States special envoy to Sudan said on Wednesday Washington was planning new financial sanctions against Sudan. Blair said the conflict in Darfur had to be seen as part of a global struggle against terrorism and extremists to which the world could not close its eyes. "If Sudan descends much further into the chaos that is already there it'll spread across that part of Africa, you will get new radicalisation going on because this extremism is now preying on all of these conflicts," Blair said. "In the early 21st century the world is interdependent ... we should be prepared to intervene in order to prevent our security being threatened in the future. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can shut ourselves away from it." The British prime minister maintained he had done "the right thing" by sending British troops into Iraq. He said the levels of death and violence in that country were the fault of a small group of extremists attempting to provoke Shi'ites and Sunnis into conflict, rather than a result of the actions of the U.S.-led coalition. "It's been extremely tough. There are people deliberately trying to give us a problem, trying to provoke civil war," he said. "It was the right thing to get rid of Saddam and I think it's the right thing now to stand alongside the majority of Iraqis who want their country to be governed properly."
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