Sudan appoints new envoy to Washington

September 7, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — The Sudanese government appointed the Deputy Permanent Representative of Sudan Akec Khoc Acieu, at the UN as the new Chargé d’Affaires in Washington.

The new envoy will submit his nomination documents to the US State department in the coming days.

The former Sudanese envoy was well known for a press conference he held to protest the decision by US president George Bush to impose stiffened against Sudan in May 2007.

The press conference was marked by the Lueth’s sharp rhetoric and his vigorous gestures as he blasted the US administration, calling the sanctions an outcome of “bi-partisan politics”.

In the press conference Lueth also denied that genocide occurred in Darfur despite the fact that he wrote an article labeling the conflict in Darfur as “genocide” in September 2004.

Dana Milbank from the Washington Post named Lueth as ’Khartoum Karl’ saying he acted as a “propagandists” for “the genocidal Sudanese government”.

Both Lueth and Acieu are members of the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) which joined the government of national unity following the signature of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Acieu, who is the first doctor to join the SPLM several months after its formation in 1983, is graduated from Khartoum University Faculty of Medicine.

He worked with the current minister of foreign affairs Deng Alor, in the important SPLM office in Addis Ababa in the eighties and then he was the SPLM representative in France for more than ten years.

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.

(ST)