Beijing - China on Tuesday voiced 'grave concerns' over the
International Criminal Court's decision to charge the Sudanese
president with genocide in the embattled Darfur region, and said a
BBC report alleging that China had violated a UN arms embargo on
Darfur was 'strongly biased.'
'China has grave concerns and misgivings about the ICC's
prosecution,' foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
'The ICC's actions should be helpful to the stability of the
Darfur region and to finding a solution to the issue, not the
contrary,' Liu told reporters.
An ICC prosecutor on Monday applied for an arrest warrant against
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of genocide and crimes
against humanity over the past five years in Darfur.
Liu said the Darfur issue was in a 'critical and sensitive
period.'
'We hope all parties can cautiously solve the issue through
negotiation, and avoid adding new complicating factors,' he said.
The BBC television report alleging that China violated a UN
embargo by selling arms used by the Sudanese government in Darfur was
motivated by 'ulterior motives,' the official China Daily on Tuesday
quoted Liu Guijin, China's special envoy for Darfur, as saying.
Liu Guijin denied that China had violated the UN arms embargo on
Darfur and called the BBC programme 'strongly biased.'
The BBC said on its website that it 'found the first evidence that
China is currently helping Sudan's government militarily in Darfur.'
It said it had 'tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese
province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in
2005.'
'The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who
fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur,' it said.
But Liu Guijin said China was 'not a major arms' supplier to
Sudan,' citing a report in March by the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, which said China accounted for only 8 per cent of
Sudan's arms imports from 2003 to 2007.
'China's arms sales were very small in scale and never made to
non-sovereign entities,' he was quoted as saying. 'A few shots of
Chinese trucks in Darfur cannot be used to accuse China of fuelling
the conflict in Darfur.'
Liu Guijin said a minister from an unnamed African country had
told him that the conflict in Darfur had dragged on mainly because
Western nations supplied the rebels with arms that were 'more
advanced than the ones being used by government forces.'
In a statement issued on Friday, the US-based Dream for Darfur
urged China to use its 'unrivalled influence' to bring security to
Darfur.
'China can immediately demand that the Sudanese regime stop
killing its own unarmed citizens and insist that Sudan stop
obstructing the full UN force from deploying,' Jill Savitt, the
executive director of Dream for Darfur, said in the statement.
Dream for Darfur previously said it was likely to stage some form
of protest in Beijing during next month's Olympic Games.
Some analysts believe China has slightly softened its line on
Sudan under international pressure.
Your Talkback on this Story