A US senator on Wednesday accused the administration of President George W. Bush of being "timid" in trying to get China to stop the sale of arms to Sudan, which are fueling the conflict in Darfur.
"Whether it's Tibet or the genocide in Darfur, we are allowing the Chinese to get away with so much," Senator Robert Menendez told a congressional hearing into the five-year-old conflict in the western Sudan's Darfur region, where a UN official says 300,000 people may have been killed.
"Maybe it's because (the Chinese) own so much of our debt, but our response to them has been timid," Menendez said.
Menendez accused China of breaking a UN embargo on weapons sales to Darfur.
"Ninety percent of small arms sold to Sudan between 2004 and 2006 ... including assault rifles, the most common weapon used in Darfur, come from the Chinese," he said.
Beijing "has either disavowed their existence or minimized the scope of its arms trade with Sudan, or denied that its weapons make a difference in the conflict in Darfur.
"Isn't China clearly, by continuing to provide arms that make their way to Darfur, violating the embargo?" he asked Bush's special envoy to Sudan, Richard Williamson, who gave testimony to a panel of US senators on whether progress has been made towards ending the violence in Darfur.
China is the top arms supplier to Sudan and a major investor in Africa's largest country, particularly in its oil industry.
Sudanese soldiers and Arab militias aligned to the government have been accused of atrocities, including child rape and murder in Darfur, which plunged into conflict in 2003 when rebel groups demanding a greater share of Sudan's resources rose up against the Khartoum government.
"We have a complicated and broad relationship with China," Williamson told the panel.
"I am disappointed that China doesn't have greater concern for the people who are suffering in Darfur and is not more proactively helpful to us," he said.
Williamson allowed that the Chinese sell arms to Sudan, but said Beijing was not violating the UN embargo.
"Technically, the arms come into the country for sale to the government of Sudan, which is not covered by the embargo," he said.
Williamson, along with assistant administrator for Africa at the US Agency for International Development, Katherine Almquist, and Jane Lute of the UN Department of Field Support, painted a grim picture of progress made in restoring peace in Darfur, as they testified before the Senate panel.
Williamson called Darfur "genocide in slow motion".
Lute said that "two-thirds of the population of six million in Darfur -- that's four million people -- have been affected by this conflict."
Almquist said 2.45 million people have been internally displaced by the Darfur conflict, and another 250,000 have sought refuge in neighboring Chad.
The UN envisaged having 80 percent of the 26,000 peace-keepers pledged for Darfur deployed by the end of the year, even though the world body has "very little standing capacity, no cadre of civilian personnel," she added.
"Have we stretched the system to its limits? Yes, and we continue to do so," Lute said.
On Tuesday UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told the Security Council that as many as 300,000 people may have died in the Darfur conflict.
