Khartoum, Sudan
Chinese President Hu Jintao brought gifts to Sudan this week, despite its appalling human-rights record. Hu offered an interest-free loan of $13 million so President Omar Hassan al-Bashir could build a new palace. He also wrote off $170 million of Sudanese debt. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. was disappointed in the “mixed signals” China was sending to Sudan, which still refuses to allow in international peacekeepers to stop the genocide in Darfur. “China obviously has its own reasons for doing that,” McCormack said. Sudan is China’s fourth-largest supplier of oil and an important trade partner.
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