Sudan Min: US To Lift Sanctions When Peace Pact Is Signed
CAIRO, Oct 03, 2003 (AP) — The signing of a final peace accord to the civil war in Sudan will result in the U.S. lifting sanctions on the country, the Sudanese foreign minister said in remarks published Friday.
“Before I arrived in New York, I received a message from American President George Bush to (Sudanese) President (Omar) el-Bashir, transmitted by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,” Mustafa Osman Ismail said in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.
“The message assured (el-Bashir) that the United States will lift its sanctions once a final peace agreement is signed,” Ismail said in the interview, which took place in New York where he attended the U.N. General Assembly meeting.
Sudan has been on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism for many years. It is subject to additional U.S. sanctions because of its government’s alleged involvement in religious persecution and slavery and other rights abuses.
“I met Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington last May,” Ismail told the London-based paper. “He assured me that after the signing of a peace treaty, all the sanctions would be lifted.”
The U.S. hasn’t made such a commitment in public. However, Washington has welcomed the recent progress toward peace in Sudan’s 20-year civil war and has acknowledged that the Khartoum government has cooperated in the war on terrorism.
Retired U.S. Gen. Carl Fulford is scheduled to hold talks in Kenya this weekend on a security agreement that the Sudanese government and rebels signed after three weeks of negotiations in the Kenyan town of Naivasha last month. The accord provides for the redeployment of rival forces during an interim administration in Sudan.
A final peace accord is expected to lead to the return of a U.S. ambassador to Khartoum, where Washington has had no top envoy for more than five years.
Ismail said Thursday that he expects his government and the rebels to sign a final peace agreement by the end of the year. The rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement issued a statement Thursday that avoided a forecast for complete agreement, but expressed guarded optimism about the negotiations.
The two sides are due to resume negotiations in Kenya Oct. 6.
The civil war began in 1983 when Christian and animist rebels in the south took up arms for autonomy from the largely Arab and Muslim government in the north. The conflict is also driven by competition over oil wells and land. At least 2 million people have died, mainly due to famine and disease exacerbated by war.