US may capitalize on progress in Sudan peace process
By Matthew Lee
BANGKOK, Oct 21 (AFP) — Eager to highlight its longstanding association with a peace process that seems to be working, the United States on Tuesday sent its top diplomat to attend talks between Sudan’s government and southern rebels who appear close to a deal to end their two-decades old war.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is to arrive in Kenya — where the Sudan talks are taking place — amid a resurgence in Israeli-Palestinian violence that has further dampened the prospects for the success of the ailing so-called “roadmap” for Middle East peace.
But Sudan — where the predominantly Muslim government in Khartoum and rebels from the mainly Christian and animist south since 1983 in Africa’s longest running civil war — is a different story.
Both sides have noted substantial progress in the talks, which last month produced a landmark security agreement, and, along with mediators and other observers, have predicted a final settlement may be at hand.
US officials have downplayed suggestions that Powell’s presence at the talks is a sign of imminent success and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has stressed that the secretary plans only to “encourage progress.”
“If we can go there and help this process along, if we can help this process toward a conclusion, it’s a useful and important investment of the secretary’s time,” a senior State Department official said Monday.
“That’s why we’re going,” the official told reporters who are accompanying Powell here at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on to Nairobi and then to Madrid for an Iraq donors conference.
But in addition to ending the Sudan war, in which more than 1.5 million people have been killed and four million others displaced, success at the Kenya talks may reap unintended benefits for the United States, officials said.
An agreement on Sudan could send a powerful message to the Muslim world, particularly in Arab nations where US popularity has plummeted because of the deteriorating Middle East situation and the war in Iraq, they said.
While stressing that the aim of US involvement in the Sudan peace process was to help the Sudanese people, the officials noted pointedly that President George W. Bush has been a firm backer of the peace process and early in his term appointed a special envoy for Sudan.
Earlier this month, during Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s state visit to Washington, Bush vowed to intensify his administration’s support of and engagement in the peace talks, they observed.
“We’ve been involved in this for a long time,” one official said from Washington. “It doesn’t make big headlines but it’s an example of our to help and seek peace for everyone, Muslims too.”
“It can’t hurt to be associated with something that produces real results for them,” the official said.
However, the officials insisted there were no plans to try to take advantage of possible success in Sudan to boost the flagging US image in the Middle East.
“Is there something wrong with helping people make peace?” the senior State Department official snapped in Bangkok when asked whether the Bush administration thought it could cash in on a Sudan peace deal.
The latest round of talks began on Friday with Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), heading their respective delegations.
After reaching last month’s security deal — which lay out arrangements for a six-year transition period during which the rebel-controlled south will be autonomous — Taha and Garang are now focusing on the delicate issues of power- and wealth-sharing.
Under a tentative arrangement reached last month, after the test period of autonomy, an internationally supervised referendum will be held to allow the southern Sudanese to choose whether to remain part of Sudan or become independent.