como se fosse uma baleia...

O The Wall Street Journal publica hoje um pequeno artigo sobre a questão sudanesa. Para ler é preciso registo, mas pode ler-se em SPLMtoday.com, site duma organização que dá pelo nome de SPLM/A, Sudan People's Liberation Movement e Sudan People's Liberation Army (*).

Não faltam, como já vem sendo hábito, menções à França, à China e à Rússia a propósito de concessões de exploração petrolífera e venda de sofisticado material de guerra, como é o caso dos Mig-29, por exemplo:

Russia's MiG corporation has just dispatched two new MiG-29 fighters to Sudan out of a total order of 12 fighter jets, a deal worth around $200 million. And the company badly needs the cash.

Sudan wants to raise its oil production and Block 6, an oil field partly located in southern Darfur, is an important part of this plan. These reserves have certainly caught Beijing`s attention. The concessions for Block 6 are in the hands of the China National Petroleum Corporation, the biggest foreign investor in the Sudanese oil industry.

Block 5 is situated in the south, where Khartoum just agreed on a peace deal after a 21-year campaign against the local Christian and animist Africans that left two million dead. Because of the fighting, TotalfFinaElf, the French oil giant that owns the concession to this field, suspended operations there in the 1980s. It can only hope to tap those reserves if the peace holds, which may go some way to explaining why Paris had been so soft on Khartoum over Darfur while the peace deal in the south was being negotiated.

(*) O facto de me socorrer deste link para os SPML/A não quer de todo dizer que apoie ou concorde de alguma forma com as posições ou acções que possam defender. Confesso que nem sequer conheçia, até há minutos, estas organizações.