US National Security Council officials targeted in activist lobbying

January 21, 2010 (WASHINGTON) — Five members of the National Security Council Deputies Committee are said to have met today to undertake a first quarterly review of the Administration’s Sudan policy. The meeting was the subject of a brief advertising campaign launched by an activist coalition.

The National Security Council (NSC), which is part of the Executive Office of the President, is a higher authority than the State Department. So activists have seized on the meeting as a way of influencing the conduct of American diplomacy with Sudan, which activist leaders have found dissatisfactory.

Sudan Now, a coalition of Sudan advocacy groups, on Wednesday ran a new advertisement in the Washington Post and Politico, a newspaper marketed to political insiders. The advertisement depicted the five deputies who would participate in the meeting: Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor; Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Stuart Levey, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence; Erica Barks-Ruggles, Deputy to the Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations; Jim Steinberg, Deputy Secretary of State.

“We appeal to the five deputies to act now in leading multilateral efforts aimed at holding those who promote violence in Sudan accountable. We also urge them to immediately deploy full-time U.S. diplomatic teams to the region in order to accelerate peace efforts,” said John Norris, Executive Director of the Enough Project, which was one of the organization’s behind the advertising effort.

Scott Gration, the special envoy to Sudan, has described the NSC quarterly reviews as a way of reviewing benchmarks on conditions on the ground in Sudan. He said that officials have put together a “stoplight chart” to evaluate a variety of factors.

Enough Project this week rolled out a report on the question of “benchmarks.” These relate to humanitarian access, political freedoms, and the American success or failure as guarantor of the fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005.

Several congressmen have pushed the Administration to publicly disclose its own set of benchmarks. One activist figure told Sudan Tribune that he expected that Gration would present a more positive assessment than is warranted. That would be consistent with the upbeat outlook taken by the envoy publicly in both Sudan and Washington.

In a separate unconfirmed development, another team has been formed within the National Security Council to consider the implications of the upcoming referendum on the independence of South Sudan.

(ST)