US special envoy extends stay in Sudan despite talks suspension

June 3, 2008 (WASHINGTON) – The US State Department announced that the special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson will extend his visit an extra day despite an announcement that talks between the two countries are suspended.

“I understand he [Williamson] is interested in trying to stay there a day longer to try to see what he could do to help the two sides come together” the spokesman for the US State Department Sean McCormack told reporters today.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the last minute change by Williamson who has already prolonged his visit till Tuesday in a bid to bridge differences between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) over the oil rich region of Abyei.

Earlier today in Khartoum the US envoy appearing frustrated told reporters that he was “sad and disappointed…. until north and south Sudan wanted peace there’s nothing the United States or others can do.”

“Right now our talks are suspended,” he added.

However the US official provided did not provide an update on the progress of talks regarding Darfur which was believed to be the main focus of the negotiations, particularly the deployment of peacekeepers in the war ravaged region.

Joel Maybury, an American embassy official, told Associated Press that no date has been set for a new round of Khartoum-Washington talks.

Williamson is expected to report to US president Bush on the outcome of his talks. However it remains to be seen what strategy Washington would take with Sudan in an elections year.

Last month the US envoy told Darfur advocated in a conference call that tougher sanctions remain an option on the table if the US president Bush deems them necessary.

The Sudanese presidential adviser told official news agency (SUNA) that Williamson’s decision “is not justified”.

“The attempt by the envoy [Williamson] to link the continuation of dialogue is a position we don’t understand” he said.

“This position does not express the convictions of the envoy [Williamson] but it seems like he was asked to convey it to us” Nafi added.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel-Haleem told Reuters that Williamson “had been unhelpful from the start”.

“He came to spoil,” Abdel-Haleem said. “The success of the talks has never figured in his mind. He came just to pollute the atmosphere and go. Linking Abyei to the Sudan-U.S. so-called dialogue, Abyei has never been a part of this.”

The border area between North and South Sudan witnessed the most violent clashes last week between Sudanese army and SPLA that left at least 22 people killed and scores injured.

Aid workers, U.N. and Sudanese officials have described the town as devastated, with the market area burned to the ground and the majority of its population displaced.

The sticky issue of Abyei was left undetermined in the Comprehensive Agreement (CPA) signed between the North and South in 2005.

However under a protocol which was part of the CPA, a commission known as the Abyei Boundaries Commission (ABC) was to “define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka Chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905, referred to herein as Abyei Area”.

However the president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir said that the NCP is committed to the Abyei Protocol only with the border of 1905. He further said the government is not concerned with the ABC report and that the latter is of no value to them.

The SPLM signed a peace deal in January 2005 with the government of the National Congress Party in January 2005 ending two decades of civil war in Southern Sudan. The peace deal made the SPLM, the ruling party in the south and the NCP the ruling party in the north.

In 2011, southerners will be asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want to be independent or remain part of Sudan. In the same year Abyei will hold a separate referendum on whether to retain its special administrative status in the north or join the south.

The SPLM chairman Salva Kiir confirmed that the Sudanese army of building forces in Abyei but ruled out the possibility of returning to civil war.

Last week SPLM officials including Sudanese foreign minister Deng Alor pulled out of talks between Sudan and the United States, saying the negotiations could have emboldened northern soldiers to attack Abyei.

Williamson met in Rome last April with a Sudanese delegation headed by Nafi and included Sudan’s spy chief Salah Gosh as well as foreign minister Deng Alor. The talks were considered a beginning of a new approach by Washington in dealing with Sudan crises.

News of the meeting drew widespread criticism in the US from lawmakers and Darfur advocates who think that the Sudanese government has not lived up to its previous commitments with regards to Darfur and partially to the North-South agreement.

The New York Times (NYT) obtained a series of documents exchanged between Washington and Khartoum on a series of steps to normalize relations between the two countries. The documents were leaked by an unidentified US official described as being “critical of the administration’s position”.

The report said that the Bush administration could remove Sudan from an American list of state supporters of terrorism and normalize relations if the Sudanese government agreed, among other steps, to allow Thai and Nepalese peacekeepers as part of the peacekeeping force.

However Williamson told US lawmakers that the report is “not accurate” and that if it was “he would not defend it and would not engage in it”. He further said that it was the Sudanese government which approached Washington on the requirements for normalizing ties.

“Concrete, verifiable, significant progress must be achieved on the ground before we can contemplate improved relations” Williamson told US senate.

But following the Rome negotiations the Sudanese government decided to release containers belonging to the US embassy that was being held by custom authorities in Port Sudan for over a year.

The containers contained equipments that were to be used for new embassy complex in south Khartoum that was under construction for over two years.

The daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat quoting unidentified Sudanese official said that the US administration agreed to “re-open a bank account for the Sudanese embassy in Washington” in return.

Last month Washington also released a number of Sudanese inmates held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay.

The US Department of Treasury also appeared to have held back on punishing foreign companies for violating Sudan sanctions despite an earlier announcement in February of their intention to do so.

Moreover a coalition of Darfur advocacy groups in the US alleged that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) failed to provide clearance for a rule prohibiting federal contracts to companies believed to be conducting business in Sudan unless they certify otherwise.

The rule is mandated by the Sudan divestment bill passed into a law late December.

(ST)