Obama Sudan Policy Aims to End Conflict, Clinton Says

 Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration set out an approach to Sudan today that directs attention toward a fragile peace deal holding together the northern and southern halves of the country while pushing for an end to violence in Darfur.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and U.S. envoy Scott Gration jointly announced after months of internal deliberations what they described as a new policy rooted in diplomatic engagement.

The administration held out the prospect of dropping sanctions on Sudan if the oil-producing African nation eases the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, implements the north-south peace accord brokered by the U.S. in 2005, and refuses to harbor terrorists. The Bush administration sought to influence the Sudanese government in a similar way.

“We will continue to pursue engagement and save lives and achieve results,” President Barack Obama said in a statement released as Clinton spoke. He noted that later this week he would formally renew sanctions on the Sudanese government while waiting for it to act.

The international community has been unable to halt fighting between government-backed militias and rebels in Darfur, a conflict that has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the western region. Obama and Clinton have echoed activists in describing the scorched-earth campaign as genocide.

Secret Benchmarks

U.S. officials say they have set a series of benchmarks for progress and have enclosed the political, economic and diplomatic incentives and penalties in a classified annex to the policy review.

“If the government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace there will be incentives; if it does not, then there will be increased pressure imposed by the United States and the international community,” Obama said.

Sudan has been seeking to normalize ties with the U.S. and has asked to be removed from the U.S.’s state sponsors of terrorism list, which triggers sanctions and prevents much U.S. foreign assistance.

In July, Gration said the sanctions on trade and investment were harming efforts to bring peace to the country and argued that the decision to keep Sudan on the list was “political.”

An administration official, briefing reporters at the State Department today, said the U.S. won’t remove Sudan from the terrorism list until its government fulfills peace commitments and halts its sponsorship of terrorists.

Al-Bashir Bypassed

In its diplomatic strategy, the U.S. won’t deal directly with Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir, who is under indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and has told him to get a good lawyer, the official said.

U.S. officials instead will continue to talk to Bashir’s adviser, Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani, and government ministers, the official said.

While Atabani took issue with the continued description of the situation in Darfur as genocide, he applauded limits in the policy.

“The strategy did not include some of the extreme ideas and suggestions, promoted by some, which ranged from calling for military intervention in Sudan to enforcing a no-fly zone in Darfur,” Atabani told reporters in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. “And maybe this is an important development in the thinking of the U.S., which reflects the new Obama spirit.”

Atabani said Sudan had not yet been informed of what incentives the U.S. is prepared to offer.

‘Critical Juncture’

Clinton, in her news conference, said Sudan is at a “critical juncture,” and she warned that instability there could transform the country into an “incubator of violence and instability in an already volatile region.”

“We are approaching two key issues, Darfur and the comprehensive peace agreement, simultaneously and in tandem,” Clinton said in describing the administration’s policy.

Tensions have risen between northern and the semi- autonomous southern Sudan in recent months as the south prepares to hold a referendum in 2011 on whether to form an independent state.

The 2005 agreement, which called for the referendum, ended a 21-year civil war between Muslim northern Sudan and the mostly animist and Christian south. Al-Bashir’s government has refused to accept borders that international experts have proposed for the oil-rich area of Abyei.

Toll of Violence

Clashes between pro-government forces and rebels in Darfur, along with tribal fighting, banditry and disease, have killed about 300,000 people, according to UN estimates. The government puts the violence-related death toll at about 10,000.

Gration said China, the major investor in Sudan’s oil industry, had been helpful to U.S. efforts by exerting its influence on the Sudanese government. While China and the U.S. have differences over tactics, the two governments agree on the strategic goal of stability in the region, Gration said.

Rice said UN peacekeeping forces now deployed in Sudan, which the Bush administration pushed to deploy there, will help supply information for the U.S. to assess whether conditions are improving for residents of Darfur. The UN has 18,810 soldiers and civilian police in Darfur and 9,723 uniformed personnel in its mission in southern Sudan.

The UN and the African Union, which participates in the peacekeeping effort, have expressed concerns about a military buildup in North Darfur by the Sudanese government and a rebel faction.

Sudan is under broad U.S. sanctions in addition to those stemming from its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Clinton Curbs

An executive order signed in 1997 by President Bill Clinton prohibits a range of U.S. trade with Sudan, including the import of any Sudanese goods and the export to the country of anything except food, clothing and medicine. It also prohibits the extension of U.S. credit to Sudan.

The Darfur Accountability Act, passed in 2006, requires the U.S. government to certify to Congress that Sudan is disarming pro-government militias and helping implement peace accords, among other steps, before those sanctions under the executive order can be lifted.

The UN Security Council voted in March 2005 to freeze the assets and bar the travel outside Sudan of anyone committing crimes against humanity in Darfur, including officials of the Sudanese government. The council later imposed those penalties on five Sudanese military and militia leaders.