Beijing dismisses UN report alleging that Chinese ammunition was sent to Darfur and used in attack on peacekeepers
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The UN report says Chinese bullets had been used in an attack on a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. Photograph: Fred Noy/AP
China is trying to block the publication of a United Nations report alleging that Chinese ammunition was sent to Darfur in violation of an arms embargo.
UN security council members are seeking to resolve the dispute about the report, which found Chinese bullets had been used in an attack on peacekeepers in Sudan.
The document, dismissed by Beijing as irresponsible and inappropriate, is sensitive since the bullets were discovered in the war-torn Darfur region, subject to UN weapons sanctions since 2005.
But security council members are desperate to prevent the row escalating into a diplomatic incident. They are focusing on a more immediate Sudanese crisis – the danger of civil war between the north and south of the country resuming – and need China’s help in preventing it.
Members of the security council, which includes the US, China, Russia, France and Britain, all sit on the sanctions committee which met behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss the report. China said there was insufficient evidence to suggest it had broken the Darfur sanctions embargo, saying the bullets could have been smuggled from elsewhere in Africa or even purchased long before sanctions were put in place. China has blocked publication of the report and demanded that the authors come back next week with more evidence.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said the accusations were groundless and it was inappropriate to make such claims based on unsupported evidence.
The report claims bullet casings found in Darfur were made in China after 2009. The bullets were used in an attack on a joint UN-African Union force that has been trying to maintain peace in a conflict involving Sudanese government-backed forces and rebel groups that the UN says has cost at least 300,000 lives.
One compromise under discussion is for the report to be published in full but accompanied by a covering letter from China setting out its alternative case.
The row is regarded by the security council members as unhelpful at a time when the prospect of renewed north-south civil war is looming. The south is due to hold a referendum on 9 January on whether to remain part of Sudan and is almost certain to vote for secession, possibly prompting an invasion by the north of the impoverished, but oil-rich, south.
The US and the UK have only limited influence on the Sudanese government but China, which has oil interests in Sudan, has more sway over Khartoum.
John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, who is scheduled to visit Sudan, said today: “Sudan is at a pivotal moment. Every reliable source indicates that southern Sudan will vote for separation, dividing Africa’s largest country and taking with it some 80% of known Sudanese oil reserves. The critical choice that leaders in both north and south face is between a future of peaceful coexistence or a return to chaos and war in a place tragically familiar with both.”