Brussels, 12/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - EP President Hans Pöttering, and Salih Mahmoud Osman, the Sudanese defender of human rights and Sakharov prize winner 2007, have exhorted the EU to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government, which continues to protect perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Addressing the press on 12 June in Brussels they insisted that the international community was morally and legally obliged to act. Osman said that the “EU had a special responsibility” and called on the European Council to decide next week on “targeted sanctions: ” freezing assets of several Khartoum government ministers. The EU is expected to put pressure on China to understand that it is “unacceptable to support a regime that commits genocide against its own people”.