CAIRO, August 2 (IslamOnline.net) – British Prime Minister Tony Blair is making the case for a "colonial war" against Sudan because of its growing oil reserves, as there are no signs of highly-touted claims of genocide in the Arab country, The Guardian reported Monday, August 2.

"Absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil," John Laughland, an associate of Sanders Research Associates, wrote in the British daily.

"For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be 'no blood for oil' in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur," Laughland added.

The writer said as oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west "not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this."

"Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company," the British writer said. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor.

The British paper highlighted violence in Sudan, but lamented that media have taken "this complex picture and projected on to it a simple morality tale of ethnic cleansing and genocide."

"Humanitarian aid should be what the Red Cross always said it must be - politically neutral. Anything else is just an old-fashioned colonial war - the reality of killing, and the escalation of violence, disguised with the hypocritical mask of altruism," the paper concluded.