Sudan’s FM presses US on normalizing ties as promised

January 26, 2011 (WASHINGTON) – The United States must follow through on its promises to Sudan after it allowed the referendum in the South to proceed smoothly and after the North said it will recognize its results, the Sudanese top diplomat said today.

An independence referendum this month was the centerpiece of a 2005 peace deal that ended a devastating 22-year civil war between the Khartoum government and southern rebels.

The U.S. pledged to ease sanctions on Sudan and delist it from terrorism-sponsoring countries if the vote goes peacefully and uninterrupted.

Washington made it clear however, that full normalization is contingent upon resolution of a separate conflict on Darfur.

But the Sudanese foreign minister Ali Karti urged the U.S. to drop its demands on Darfur.

“Normalization of relations should not be held hostage by Darfur,” Karti told a Washington think-tank audience before his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In Karti’s meeting with Clinton, the latter reaffirmed U.S. willingness to move toward normalizing relations but outlined several steps which must take place before this can happen, the State Department said.

State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley said the United States could begin the legal process of dropping Sudan from the list in the next couple of weeks if northern and southern Sudanese leaders agree on how to work out several key issues unresolved by the January poll including citizenship, borders and division of oil revenues.

Crowley’s inclusion of post-referendum items for delisting appeared to contradict what other U.S. officials promised Khartoum this month.

“Should the referendum be carried out successfully and the results are recognized by the government, President Obama would indicate his intention to begin the process of removing them,” Ambassador Princeton Lyman, the lead US negotiator to Sudan, told Agence France Presse (AFP) in early January.

“It is a process that takes some time, but by beginning the process in the wake of the referendum, the hope is if they meet all the conditions it can be done by July,” Lyman added.

The North and South have struggled for months to reach a compromise on post-referendum items with no success and it is not clear if they can strike a deal before the end of the interim period in July.

Karti said Khartoum had delivered on its promise to allow southern Sudan to vote for independence, and that was “high time” the United States put relations back on track.

“Whenever there was a call for talks, the government was available. We are open for any talks. So the challenge and the obstacle lies in the other side,” he said, referring to factional splits among Darfuri rebel groups.

Karti added that the United States and Sudan both stood to gain from normalized relations, noting cooperation on counter-terrorism as one benefit.

“Rather than moving the goals let us stick to the goals now and work together to get to those goals,” the Sudanese official said.

At his state of the Union address on Tuesday, US president Barack Obama hailed the referendum process saying it materialized with the help allowing Southerners to vote for independence after years of war.

(ST)