Sudan welcomes defeat of US Republicans

Nov 8, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — A senior Sudanese official on Wednesday hailed the defeat of US President George W. Bush’s Republican party in congressional elections, although he doubted there would be any major change in American policy.

“I am very happy at the defeat of the Republicans,” presidential adviser Nafie Ali Nafie told a news conference in Khartoum, adding that it was a defeat for Bush’s policies on Iraq and his “blind support” for Israel.

“The voters have expressed their discontent,” he said. “But we know that the foreign policy of the United States does not change with a change in majority in Congress.”

Nafie said his government did “not expect a radical change in American policy toward Sudan” after the Democrats ousted the Republicans from power in the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s mid-term elections.

Despite constant US sanctions, Khartoum was “doing all it can to improve its relations with the United States, but on the basis of mutual respect”, said the adviser to President Omar al-Bashir.

Nafie defended his government’s policies in the troubled western region of Darfur at the news conference which was also fed by video-link to journalists in South Africa and France.

A solution to the conflict “does not pass through UN troops”, said Nafie whose government has rejected a Security Council resolution calling for UN peacekeepers to take over from an African Union monitoring force.

Disputing observations by U.N. officials and aid workers that the security situation in Darfur had deteriorated since May when the government and a rebel group signed a peace agreement, Nafie proposed that the opposite had occurred.

“Saying Darfur is not safe is wrong. The security situation after the agreement has greatly improved.”

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others displaced since the conflict began in February 2003 when Darfur’s ethnic African tribesmen took up arms against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab government in Khartoum.

(AP/AFP)