China commits to Sudan peace
2008-02-19 15:34
Beijing - China Premier Wen Jiabao outlined his country's efforts to bring peace to wartorn Sudan, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, amid growing pressure on Beijing to help end years of violence there.
Wen made his comments about China's efforts to stabilise Sudan during a phone conversation with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday in which they discussed an array of issues, the foreign ministry said.
"China hopes for a quick realisation of peace, stability and development for the Sudanese region and has worked constructively to this end," Wen said according to a statement posted on the ministry's website.
"China was the first nation outside Africa to send peacekeepers to Darfur and the first and biggest development aid provider to the region," he was quoted as saying.
China's envoy off to Darfur
Brown praised China's efforts in resolving the issue and voiced Britain's opposition to boycotting the Olympic Games in Beijing, according to the statement.
The ministry also announced that China's special envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin, would visit Sudan from February 24 to 27, following a three-day trip to Britain that begins on Thursday.
The Darfur envoy had been in the region three times and had made "great efforts for the solution of the Darfur issue", said foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao.
"Relevant countries should maintain patience and carry out dialogue and consultation to resolve the issue properly. We should not use unbridled pressure," Liu Jianchao said.
China, Sudan's main overseas supporter and arms supplier, had come under growing pressure to use its influence on the East African regime to end the bloodshed in Darfur.
'Genocide Games'
Activists had sought to pile the pressure on Chinese authorities this year as the world's spotlight had increasingly turned on China ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.
Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg said last week that his conscience would no longer allow him to work on the Olympics as an artistic consultant while Sudan's government carried out genocide in its western Darfur province.
On the same day, a group of Nobel Prize winners and Olympic athletes wrote an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, asking him to push Sudan to end the atrocities in Darfur.
United States actress and United Nations Children's Fund Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow had branded the Beijing Olympics the "Genocide Games" in a reference to Darfur.
According to the UN, about 200 000 people had died in Darfur from the combined effects of war, famine and disease since 2003, after a civil conflict erupted pitting government-backed Arab militias against non-Arab ethnic groups.