White House moving more aggressively on Sudan policy: report

June 7, 2010 (WASHINGTON) — The tour by U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden in Africa is aimed mainly at discussing the issues facing Sudan particularly relating to the 2011 self-determination referendum, a major milestone in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brokered by Washington, according to a news report today.

Biden who flew in from Egypt arrived today in Kenya at the second-leg of three-stop African tour which will end in South Africa where he will attend the inauguration ceremony of the FIFA soccer world cup.

The senior U.S. official is scheduled to meet with Sudan’s First Vice President and president of South Sudan government (GoSS) Salva Kiir on Wednesday and with former South African President Thabo Mbeki to discuss CPA implementation and the situation in Darfur.

The acting minister for presidential affairs at GoSS Luka Byong said in press statements that Kiir received a message this week from U.S. president Barack Obama extending his congratulations to him on winning the elections in the semi-autonomous region.

Byong said that Obama urged Kiir to focus on peace issues and meeting the pledges he had made during the electoral campaign namely his vow of no return to war with the North. He further said that Obama’s letter underscored the importance of conducting the referendum on time and promising support for development throughout the process.

Oil-producing south Sudan will vote in seven months on a referendum on secession, which most analysts believe will result in independence. But many issues such as the north-south border, along which much of the oil reserves lie, are yet to be agreed.

Most analysts believe the under-developed region will opt for independence following more than two decades of civil war that left millions dead. Many countries in the region fear that Sudan’s breakup will create a situation vulnerable for violence between the North and South.

Over the weekend, the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir warned of an “explosive” situation should the South decide to secede.

“Parts of the border could be explosive… like in the case of Ethiopia and Eritrea, or even India and Pakistan,” Bashir said during a meeting of his ruling National Congress party (NCP).

“We will accept, in good faith, the choice of the south, whatever the choice may be,” he said, but stressed he would work for unity.

The U.S. based Foreign Policy magazine said that Biden is in the region there to get involved in Sudan policy and lend some senior-level supervision to an issue that has split the Obama administration for months.

A senior U.S. administration official said that Biden’s conversation with Kiir will be “mostly about the future of southern Sudan.”

Foreign Policy said that Biden discussed the future of southern Sudan with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh and will likely come up in his Tuesday meetings with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga..

The U.S. special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration is travelling with Biden along with Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs Johnnie Carson and the National Security Council’s senior director for Africa Michelle Gavin.

The magazine said that the elevation of the Sudan issue to the top levels of the White House is reflective of demands by Sudan advocacy groups which are frustrated with divisions within the administration between hardliners and those who favor a more lenient approach.

Last month multiple administration sources told Foreign Policy that a vigorous and heated internal debate took place last month over whether or not to send a U.S. government representative to the re-inauguration ceremony for Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Gration and Carson were reportedly among those who advocated internally for sending a representative to the inauguration while administration officials who argued against sending an envoy included U.N. ambassador Susan Rice and the National Security Council Samantha Power.

It was Secretary Clinton who ultimately made the decision to send the chief consular officer at the U.S Embassy in Khartoum to attend Bashir’s inauguration. Sending a junior-level representative was a compromise, but one that apparently left both sides equally unhappy.

“Our presence at this ceremony should not be confused in any way with our continuing pledge that President Bashir should respond to the warrant for his arrest for war crimes in Darfur,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “We have nothing to do whatsoever with President Bashir.”

The decision and that explanation puzzled and irritated advocacy leaders.

“President Obama has said that genocide has been committed in Darfur by the Bashir-led government. The ICC indicted Bashir for war crimes,” said John Prendergast, cofounder of the Enough Project and an increasingly outspoken critic of the administration’s Sudan policy. “The Obama administration has thus broken with precedent in bestowing a measure of legitimacy by sending a U.S. diplomat, however low-ranking, to the inauguration of an indicted war criminal head of state.”

Prendergast said that the Obama team had argued that it was necessary to keep lines of communication open to ensure the safe return of the American hostage being held in Sudan, but dismissed that assertion because there was nothing the U.S. side got in return for attending the ceremony.

Officials have also argued that not sending an envoy would have broken protocol, another claim advocacy leaders dismiss.

“The issue of war crimes charges makes this an entirely different kettle of fish, whether or not that’s in the protocol book,” said Norris, who added that not sending a representative would have sent the message that Obama was serious about the ICC.

The Sudan advocacy community has had increasingly strained relations with Gration, who is seen as being too soft on the brutal Khartoum regime and too powerful inside the administration, using his personal relationship with Obama to exert control over the issue often outside the purview of officials above his station, including Clinton.

Sometimes, the internal tension has spilled over into public, such as when ABC News reported that Rice was “furious” in June when Gration said that Darfur was experiencing only the “remnants of genocide.” The State Department quickly confirmed that its official position is that genocide is ongoing.

(ST)