By Christian Lowe
SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama is turning the page in the West’s troubled relations with Sudan by taking a more constructive approach, a senior Sudanese official said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court has indicted the Sudanese president for war crimes in the Darfur region and European officials say Khartoum is jeopardising a peace deal that ended a separate conflict between Sudan’s north and south.
But Salman al-Wasilla, Sudan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, told Reuters in an interview the Obama administration was showing a readiness to break with the past.
“We are now witnessing a new era (with) the coming of Obama to office, who is now starting to talk about understanding and respect and support and there was a lack of this before,” he said on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Libya.
Obama this year appointed retired Air Force General Scott Gration, a close adviser, as his special envoy to Sudan and the United States last month hosted a conference of officials from Sudan’s north and south to try to keep their peace deal on track.
Attacking Western policies on Sudan over the past few years, al-Wasilla said his oil producing country had complied with international demands over Darfur and ended fighting with the rebels in the south but has not been rewarded.
“When we signed the peace agreement (with the southern rebels) we were promised the lifting of sanctions, we were promised debt relief,” he said.
“What has been achieved in four years, it should be rewarded … This is what we need: enouragement and not sanctions and allegations and pressure,” he said.
DEATH TOLL
International experts say 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in the Darfur region since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
Sudan’s Muslim north also fought a separate conflict lasting two decades against mainly Christian rebels in the south. A 2005 peace deal ended the fighting but it is threatened by disputes, including over how the two sides will share Sudan’s oil wealth.
Asked about statements by Western officials that the north-south deal was in jeopardy, al-Wasilla said: “Whoever said that should ask himself what he has done to implement it.”
“The commitment of the two leaders of north and south is that there is no going back to war … and we will do it the way which we know according to our resources and capabilities … If others are ready to help us we can speed it up,” he said.
حركة العدل و المساواة السودانية
موقع متخصص بنقل آخر الأخبار و البيانات و القرارات لحركة العدل و المساواة السودانية