Some subterranean friction between Britain’s UN ambassador, the soft-spoken Emyr Jones Parry, and the less tender-lipped Ambassador Bolton, bubbled to the surface earlier this week over a report that the US sought to protect Sudanese government officials from individual targeted sanctions. Last week, anonymous officials told Reuters that a list of eight individuals circulated by the UK was not gaining traction in the Security Council because the US was loathe to sanction members of the regime in Khartoum.

The leaker was almost certainly from the UK mission to the UN, and this apparently got Bolton’s blood boiling. He denied the accusation, and in the process took a jab at Parry, his erstwhile best ally in the Security Council.

Edith Lederer has the goods:

On Tuesday, the Security Council issued a statement demanding that the Sudanese government and rebels reach agreement by April 30 to end the Darfur conflict and reaffirming its determination to hold accountable those blocking peace and violating human rights.

Bolton called the statement "a small sign of progress," singling out criticism of Sudan's national unity government as a sign that the council wants to move ahead.

Without any prodding, he then went on to talk about the debate over the sanctions list.

"I think the next step, of course, will be on the issue of sanctions against individuals in the Sudan where we expect to make progress this week, although one small country that talked to some of you in the press about difficulties the United States was having on the sanctions is apparently, in turn, having its own difficulties," Bolton said.

"And I don't point fingers, but I expect that we will have in due course here consideration for the council an agreed upon package of individuals for sanctions and that we'll move ahead," he said.

Bolton's target was clear to everyone - including British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry.

On Wednesday, Jones Parry announced that Britain was calling for sanctions against four Sudanese, and he said the list was backed by the United States. Other council members, including Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, Peru and Slovakia are also supporting it.

"What we're going to do today is the start of a process," Jones Parry said. "But I join with the representative of an even bigger country, the United States, in putting forward today four names, representing a balanced package." (emph. mine)

Bolton is obviously quite sensitive on this issue. As well he should be. At American insistence, the list of eight got whittled down to a list of four, only one of whom is a government official, and according to reports, is only a mid-level government official at that. This is pathetic. We expect China or Russia to protect the genocidaires in Khartoum, but not the American government.

What I imagine happened—and this is pure speculation—is that the original British list of eight included Sallah Gosh, a senior Khartoum official and US intelligence asset. Instead of objecting to Gosh on his own, which if made public would have been embarrassing to the administration, the US objected to naming any senior members of the regime, claiming that the Council needs to work with, rather than against, the regime to secure peace in Darfur. This logic has been a consistent feature of one strain of US policy towards Sudan, and it may have been summoned opportunistically in an effort to thwart punitive action against Gosh.

Again, this is just speculation. But what’s striking here is that news trickling out from Turtle Bay is not that the US is pressing Russia and China to target some senior Sudanese government officials for punitive Security Council action. Rather, that the US is seeking to keep the Sudanese government’s culpability to a bare minimum. This is not the kind of behavior in which Americans can take any pride.