Sudan sees 'positives' in Obama approach

KHARTOUM — President Barack Obama's new policy on Sudan contains positives and is one of engagement, Khartoum said on Monday, despite a US description of events in Darfur as genocide.

"Compared to previous policies there are positive points... we don't see the extreme ideas and suggestions which we used to see in the past," Ghazi Salaheddin, adviser to President Omar al-Beshir, told reporters.

These ideas ranged from "calling for military intervention in the Sudan, to enforcing a no-fly zone in Darfur," Salaheddin explained.

"I will say it is a strategy of engagement, not a strategy of isolation," he added.

Obama on Monday laid out an enticement approach aimed also at ensuring Sudan does not become a base for terrorists and that a 2005 peace deal over a separate conflict in the south is firmly adhered to.

"Assessment of progress and decisions regarding incentives and disincentives will be based on verifiable changes in conditions on the ground," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

The United States had imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997, and accused it of harbouring Al-Qaeda members.

It bombed a pharmaceutical plant in the country a year later, saying the site was used to make chemical weapons.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Sudanese intelligence agencies cooperated with US authorities in the hope of having their country removed from the US black list.

But the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur which began in 2003 saw renewed tensions between Washington and Africa's largest country.

The United States described as "genocide" the conflict between rebels and government forces and militias in Darfur which killed 300,000 people according to the United Nations -- Khartoum says 10,000 people died-- and displaced 2.7 million people.

But since the end of 2006, the Darfur conflict changed in nature, with rebel groups fragmenting into many factions and violence taking the form of carjackings and robberies.

Clinton said the new US policy aims to "end conflict, gross human rights abuses, war crimes and genocide in Darfur," to ensure full implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and to make sure Sudan does not become a "safe haven for terrorists."

Salaheddin, however, rejected US talk of genocide in Darfur.

The description is "unfortunate", he said, adding that it "isolated" the United States from the international community.

Clinton also said the Obama administration would watch for "credible elections" scheduled for next year under the fragile CPA peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war in the south.

The former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (from south Sudan) welcomed the "holistic" approach of the policy which links "democratic transformation", implementation of the peace process between north and south, and a solution to the conflict in Darfur, senior leader Yasser Arman said.

Sudan is due to hold general elections in 2010, the first since 1986.