Powell heading for APEC, onward travel hinges on Sudan peace talks
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (AFP) — US Secretary of State Colin Powell left for meetings in Thailand and Spain and still uncertain intermediate stops that hinge upon the success of peace talks between Sudan and southern rebels.
“We’re going to refuel in St. Petersburg on the way somewhere,” Powell jokingly told reporters on Wednesday.
Powell is to arrive in Bangkok on Friday for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and meet up with US President George W. Bush who will arrive in the Thai capital for a state visit a day later.
According to the State Department, which has been unusually coy about the secretary’s itinerary, Powell will leave Bangkok on Tuesday, flying in the direction of Madrid.
But officials say he is likely to make at least one and possibly two stops before arriving in Spain for next week’s Iraq donors conference, set for October 23 and 24.
The Greek Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that Powell is expected in Athens on October 22 for talks on the Middle East and Iraq, relations between Greece and Turkey, Cyprus and security plans for the 2004 Olympic games.
The State Department has refused to confirm that stop but spokesman Richard Boucher has conceded it is a possibility.
Senior department officials, however, have said privately that Powell will travel to Kenya — where the Sudan peace talks are being held — should Khartoum and the rebels reach an agreement.
Officials said that if a pact is forged, Powell will attend a signing ceremony in the town of Naivasha north of Nairobi on October 22, throwing the possible Athens stop into question.
Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha arrived in Nairobi on Thursday for a new round of talks with Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang aimed at ending Sudan’s 20-year civil war.
Taha told reporters that the new round could be “the final one” amid increasingly positive developments on both the government and rebel sides.
An official with the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional body mediating the talks, said that committees doing preparatory work on the issues “have made substantial progress.”
US officials are hopeful that the two sides will be able to reach agreement on wealth- and power-sharing between Sudan’s Islamic, Arab north and the country’s more African south, where animism and Christianity are the dominant religions.
The two sides have been locked in war since 1983, in which more than 1.5 million people have been killed and more than four million others displaced.
“We remain optimistic,” one US official said.
The last round of talks ended late September when Taha and Garang signed a deal on the security arrangements to be put in place during a six-year, post-war period of autonomy for the south, ahead of a secession referendum.
That period of autonomy was clinched in a breakthrough in July 2002.