Sudan calls for dialogue with US

Oct 15, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha called for dialogue rather than confrontation with Washington, amid increasingly chilly relations over renewed US sanctions, official media said.

Taha spoke with United States envoy Andrew Natsios of “the government’s desire to have dialogue with the US administration and take bilateral relations from a state of confrontation toward one of dialogue and negotiation,” SUNA news agency said.

The report made no reference to the US decision to renew economic sanctions against Sudan, which was announced Friday — the same day Natsios arrived in Khartoum and was snubbed at the airport by Sudanese officials.

Relations between Khartoum and Washington have deteriorated sharply over insistent US-led calls for United Nations peacekeepers to take over from an overstretched African Union observer mission in Darfur.

US President George W. Bush on Friday ordered that all economic sanctions against the Sudanese government be maintained, continuing the freeze on all Sudanese government assets in the US imposed by former president Bill Clinton in November 1997.

The White House also added a ban on all oil and petrochemical transactions.

The US administration, which had already complained of restrictions imposed on its diplomats travelling outside the Sudanese capital, had expressed concern about Khartoum’s willingess to cooperate with its new envoy.

Natsios is hoping to visit the war-torn western region of Darfur and the newly autonomous south during his six-day visit, aides told reporters in Washington before his departure.

SUNA also said Britain’s International Development Secretary Hilary Benn was to arrive Monday for a visit centered on the troubled Darfur region, where President Omar al-Beshir has refused to allow the deployment of UN forces despite a UN Security Council resolution and Western pressure.

(AFP)