Sudanese VP received at high level in Washington
Nov 2, 2005 (WASHINGTON) — Top US administration officials have met with Sudan’s first vice president and stressed the need for complete implementation of the peace agreement signed last January.
Salva Kiir Mayardit held separate discussions Tuesday with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It was his first visit to Washington since taking over after the death of his predecessor, John Garang, in a helicopter crash.
Kiir also held a lengthy afternoon meeting with the State Department’s No. 2 official, Robert Zoellick, who plans a fourth trip to Sudan next week.
With Kiir at his side, Zoellick told a news conference that there was no chance that U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government will be lifted unless greater progress is made toward implementation of the peace agreement, which ended two decades of North-South civil war in the east African country.
Kiir, a longtime military and political aide to Garang, took office as president of southern Sudan and as first vice president in the government of national unity after Garang’s death.
He said there were concerns that the southern Sudanese rebel movement that Garang led would fall into squabbling factions upon the Garang’s death. This, he said, has not happened.
On Capitol Hill shortly after Kiir spoke at the State Department, the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Jendayi E. Frazer, said Garang’s death and Kiir’s flawless ascension constituted the first major test of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Garang and Sudan’s president, Omar el-Bashir, signed the U.S.-facilitated deal last January.
“While his death is a great loss, there is every reason to hope that his vision of a peaceful, democratic and unified Sudan will be fulfilled,” Frazer said. She said Garang’s peaceful replacement showed the resilience of the agreement.
Zoellick said the key to a solution in the sprawling western Sudan region of Darfur is a similar peace agreement among all parties to the conflict.
“I hope to meet with rebel groups in Darfur to make sure they have a unified position,” Zoellick said, alluding to peace talks under way in Nigeria. In addition to Darfur, he will visit Khartoum and Juba, the southern Sudan city where the new government for that region is being set up.
Asked about an upsurge in violence in Darfur, Zoellick said African Union forces now number 6,000 but have been hampered in their work by a lack of mobility.
He said the United States has been encouraging officials in Khartoum to permit delivery of Canadian armored personnel carriers to the AU.
Frazer told the House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that deals with Africa that el-Bashir himself is responsible for the holdup. She said he allowed delivery of 35 APCs but held back 70.
Lawmakers, whose outlook on the Sudan situation was far less positive than Frazer’s, said such acts by the Sudanese government were unacceptable. They also criticized the administration of President George W. Bush for allowing it to continue.
Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, one of the House’s more vocal critics of el-Bashir’s government, said rather than being tough with Sudan, U.S. officials “cajole and finesse. We don’t have to do that. We are the strongest country in the world.”
“I can’t understand why this (U.S.) government allows this dastardly, murderous government to get by with a wink and a nod.”
Zoellick said he has told Sudanese leaders that increased violence in Darfur has raised doubts whether the peace agreement would be fulfilled. “If they remain committed, they have to take actions to back their words,” Zoellick said.
Kiir said things “are moving slowly in the direction of implementing” the peace accord.
Frazer, the assistant secretary of state, said Kiir had told American officials that the Darfur situation is “what often happens when you support armed groups. You sometime lose control of the groups.”
Kiir will meet with members of Congress on Wednesday.
(AP/ST)