US special envoy to visit Sudan next Friday

August 5, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – The US special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson is due to arrive in Khartoum next Friday on a weeklong visit, state media reported today.

The spokesperson for the Sudanese foreign ministry told the official news agency (SUNA) that discussions with the US diplomat will focus on ties between the two countries, implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), dispute over Abyei and the Darfur crisis.

The visit comes three weeks after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir.

The ICC’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. Judges are expected to take months to study the evidence before deciding whether to order Al-Bashir’s arrest.

The head of US affairs in the Sudanese foreign ministry Abdel-Basit Al-Sanoosi said they would seek clarification on Washington’s position on the ICC developments.

Al-Sanoosi described Washington’s stance on the issue as “mysterious and conflicting and inconsistent”.

Last Thursday the US made a last minute decision to abstain from voting on a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution extending the mandate of the UN-African Union (AU) hybrid force in Darfur (UNAMID).

In explaining the abstention US deputy Representative to the UN Alejandro Wolff said his government strongly supports UNAMID but that the “language added to the resolution would send the wrong signal to the Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and undermine efforts to bring him and others to justice”.

The 11th hour change in the US position, which angered the UNSC members, was caused by the US special envoy Richard Williamson, a UN diplomat told Sudan Tribune last week.

The Sudanese officials did not say if Williamson would meet Al-Bashir during his visit. The US official will visit the South and Darfur.

The news agency also reported that the US special envoy will fly to Chad and Ethiopia prior to arriving in Sudan.

Williamson met with Bush in mid-July who instructed him to travel to the region “to keep the [peace] process going”, White House spokesperson Dana Perino told reporters.

The US special envoy angrily left Khartoum in June and declared that normalization dialogue with the Sudanese government has been suspended over failing to bridge differences between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) over the oil rich region of Abyei.

Sudan has been plagued by civil wars since independence and an estimated two million people have died in the North-South civil war that ended in 2005 after the CPA.

The deal also does not cover a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes since rebels took up arms in early 2003.

(ST)