As Bashir snubs, Bush’s envoy may extend her visit to Sudan
Aug 28, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Khartoum, Jendayi Frazer, may extend her visit to Sudan to meet with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, the State Department said.
US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer “has not yet met with president Beshir. She met with other senior officials, including the foreign minister, and she is still hopeful — we are still hopeful — that she will meet with president Beshir,” said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesperson.
Earlier, the president’s office announced that al-Bashir was unable to meet the American diplomat “due to his crowded schedule”.
“She plans to go to Stockholm” for a contact group meeting Tuesday on Somalia “but she also has a mission in Sudan that she wants to accomplish. She is a pretty determined person,” McCormack added.
Frazer has a letter addressed to Bush in which Beshir reiterates his firm opposition to the deployment of UN troops. The message from Bush that Frazer carried on her two-day mission was delivered to Beshir’s adviser Majzub al-Khalifa Ahmed on Sunday.
Frazer’s last-ditch mission to Sudan got off to a bad start Saturday when she was greeted at the airport by shouts of “Go Home” as an angry mob tried to cover her vehicle with anti-US banners.
Sunday, she met Foreign Minister Lam Akol — a southern Sudanese who joined Beshir’s government as part of a national unity cabinet formed last year — as well as Beshir’s top two advisers.
Protestors also followed her to the US embassy Saturday, chanting slogans against the United States and the US-British draft UN resolution that calls for UN peacekeepers to take over from an embattled African Union contingent.
A peace agreement was reached in Abuja last May but only one of the three rebel factions involved in the talks signed up and the deal has so far failed to bring an end to the bloodshed.
The mandate of a 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur ends on Sept. 30, and a draft resolution before the Security Council envisions replacing the AU force, whose mandate ends Sept. 30, with a larger and better equipped one under U.N. auspices. The poorly funded and supplied AU force has been unable to stem violence in Darfur.
Instead of the U.N. force, al-Bashir has called for the African peacekeepers to be strengthened _ and he has said he plans to send Sudanese troops to Darfur to pacify the region.
A build-up of Sudanese troops in Darfur could lead to a human rights catastrophe, the London-based rights group Amnesty International warned Monday.
Witnesses in el Fasher in North Darfur have reported that Sudanese military flights have been flying in troops and arms to the region, said Kate Gilmore, Amnesty’s executive deputy secretary general.
Gilmore called the Sudanese government’s plan to deploy its own forces in Darfur a “sham” that the U.N. must reject.
(AP/AFP/ST)