US envoy planning next Sudan visit, but report of Obama trip unsubstantiated
April 14, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — J. Scott Gration, the president’s special envoy to Sudan, is very busy in meetings in Washington and already planning a return to Sudan, said a US official who also dismissed a report that Barack Obama himself might visit the country.
According to a report Monday by the UN radio network, Radio Miraya FM, the American president might visit Sudan during his expected African tour. The report surfaced after an interview with US Embassy Spokesman John Walter.
But on Tuesday an official at the US State Department said that there was no such news of the matter internally and called the report “completely unsubstantiated.”
Gration returned to Washington this week after unexpectedly delaying his stay in Khartoum to meet with Vice President Ali Osman Taha.
Throughout the envoy’s many meetings in the region, he raised the issue of the 16 humanitarian groups expelled from Darfur since March 4, said the official. During his visit to Darfur, Gration backed down from the State Department’s insistence on the return of all the expulsed aid groups, saying that alternative ways must be found to continue the humanitarian efforts.
Rumours that Gration had accomplished any reversal of the decision were dismissed Monday by a senior UN official. The official told Sudan Tribune that the US Special Envoy returned from his trip with no concrete outcome from the meetings, an assertion corroborated by other sources.
Gration said April 2 in Khartoum that he came “with my hands open,” expressed hopes for friendship and concluded saying “I love Sudan.”
The envoy’s visit and cordial remarks were seen in some quarters as evidence of thawing relations between the United States and Sudan. It represented a new diplomatic development from an incoming administration that the Sudan government had feared would be more bellicose — several senior officials in the new US administration once had recommended air strikes against government forces.
Despite some tensions over the past six years, US hostility toward Khartoum has waned since about 2001 — a rapprochement publicly signalled in May 2004 when the US government removed Sudan from its list of states not cooperating in its “war on terror.”
Efforts to normalize relations – eliminating sanctions and trade restrictions — fell apart in the last year of the Bush administration. The former special envoy, Richard Williamson, had insisted during the talks that the Darfur crisis end before full normalization, but Khartoum wanted the sanctions removed beforehand.
Apparently pleased with the most recent diplomatic exchange, President Omer Al-Bashir told the opening session of parliament that he welcomes “the positive signs sent by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Islamic world on more than one occasion.”
US Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is expected Wednesday evening in Khartoum after a short stop in Juba.
(ST)