Sudan asks Senegal to help improve US ties

Aug 5, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan asked Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on Saturday to help improve its relations with the United States, soured by Khartoum’s refusal to accept U.N. peacekeepers in the volatile Darfur region.

After meeting Wade in Khartoum, Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said economic sanctions imposed by Washington were hindering his country’s development.

“We want to ask Your Excellency to help us improve our relations with the United States, as well as with other countries … We really want you to help us improve those relations,” Akol said in comments made in front of reporters.

“I will do everything I can to help you,” Wade said.

The U.S. calls Sudan, which hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, a state sponsor of terrorism and economic sanctions have been in place since 1997.

Wade, who has good relations with the United States and the West, is on a trip to Sudan and Chad to mediate between the feuding neighbours and help promote peace in Darfur.

The west Sudanese region has been riven since 2003 by political and ethnic conflict that has killed tens of thousands.

Washington is pressing Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur. Experts say the momentum for peace is slipping away fast while Khartoum maintains its refusal.

Al-Bashir has rejected U.N. troops for Darfur because they would come with “colonial and imperialist” ambitions, he says.

In a separate meeting on Saturday with the head of Sudan’s parliament, Wade sought to dispel these fears.

“I can tell you that I am carrying a message that the United States does not want to recolonise Sudan … the United States wants to normalise its relations with Sudan,” he told parliament chief Ahmed Ibrahim Eltahir.

Washington has also levelled charges of genocide against the government and allied militias over the violence in Darfur.

Relations between the two countries improved somewhat after Sudan provided counter-terrorism cooperation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and have grown stronger since the United States helped broker peace in south Sudan.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has recommended to the Security Council that a force of up to 24,000 U.N. troops be sent to Darfur to take over from a struggling African Union force of 7,000.

Senegal’s Wade was due to visit Darfur on Sunday for talks with rebel representatives.

(Reuters)