New US envoy arrives in Sudan
Oct 18, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — A new US charge d’affaires arrived in Sudan Tuesday and assumed charge of the embassy, amid fresh efforts by Washington to consolidate a fledgling peace deal in Africa’s largest country.
The diplomat, “Cameron Hume, has assumed charge of the US Embassy in Khartoum,” the embassy said.
A US State Department spokesman had said last week that Hume’s high profile “reflects the high priority that we place on implementing the CPA (comprehensive peace agreement for Sudan) and resolving the crisis in Darfur.”
Hume, a veteran diplomat and conflict resolution expert, arrived nine months after the signature of the peace agreement that ended 21 years of north-south civil war.
Relations have been tense between Sudan and the United States, which has not had an ambassador in Khartoum since 1997.
They were expecially icy with the Presient Omar al-Beshir’s northern Muslim party, which still dominates the new national unity cabinet but governs the country jointly with the former southern rebels and other groups.
Washington has taken the lead in pressing the former regime in Khartoum over atrocities it allegedly abetted in the war-torn western region of Darfur.
Khartoum was repeatedly threatened with crippling UN sanctions over its repression of a rebellion in Darfur that the US Congress has described as genocide.
Before the diplomatic bouts over Darfur, relations had also been strained by terrorism issues that culminated in US missile strikes on a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in 1998.
The United States destroyed the plant on suspicion that it was involved in producing chemical weapons and had links with Al-Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden, who had lived in Sudan until two years earlier.
Khartoum has repeatedly denied the allegations and demanded an apology over the strikes, which destroyed a factory that happened to be one of Sudan’s main sources of anti-malarial drugs.
Relations have eased in recent months and Washington, whilst maintaining the pressure on the government, has vowed to step up its involvement in shoring up the January peace deal.
(AFP/ST)