Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, is a master of delay. He's fooled a world (eager to be fooled) into thinking he is about to accept UN peacekeepers to stop the killing in Darfur. Once everyone seems convinced, he reverses himself. Al-Bashir is buying wasted time for a failed military effort to crush Darfur's separatist insurgents in a war that is mowing down civilians by the thousands instead.
The world wants to be fooled because it has no intention of intervening to stop the genocide, so it engages in a macabre dance with al-Bashir.
The latest manifestation of this game is The Letter: the letter that has UN headquarters buzzing. Al-Bashir told Secretary General Ban Ki-moon he would answer in writing a request to deploy several thousand UN troops and later a hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force.
The UN has been told al-Bashir signed the letter and it's on its way. It's been on its way for two weeks.
So I bump into Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudan's ambassador to the UN, in a corridor on the UN press floor. He's holding a piece of paper in his hand.
"Is that the letter?" I ask. Read more >>>
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