Sudan peace deal between govt, rebels will improve US-relations, but questions linger
By ANDREW ENGLAND, Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 28, 2004 (AP) — For much of the past decade, relations between Sudan and the United States have been strained to the point of hostility as the Islamic government persecuted its war with southern rebels and played host to Osama bin Laden.
But now that the government is close to a final peace deal with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, President Omar el-Bashir’s administration hopes relations will improve, U.S. sanctions will lift and Sudan will be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
“The war and the outcome of the war … these were some of the reasons for the sanctions,” said Mahdi Ibrahim Mohammed, a senior member of Bashir’s National Congress party and the last Sudanese ambassador to the United States. “Establishing peace is meaningless unless you help the country move forward so further insurgencies can’t happen.”
Mohammed, like other officials, told The Associated Press he believes U.S. sanctions against his country were unjust, but he praised America’s support for the peace process.
When the Islamic government and the rebels signed three protocols wrapping up their last political disputes on Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the agreements would trigger a process leading to normal relations.
Boucher said a final deal to end the 21-year southern conflict still needed to be signed and the government needed to end the violence in western Sudan’s Darfur region.
A separate insurgency in Darfur has made more than 1 million people homeless. The government has been criticized for supporting Arab militia accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
On May 18, the State Department dropped Sudan from the list of countries not cooperating in the war on terrorism because of its “remarkable” information sharing with the United States. The country, however, is still regarded as a state sponsor of terrorism.
In October, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sudan still had to do more in combating terrorism, saying Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad had to be expelled from the country.
Gutbi el-Mahdi, el-Bashir’s political adviser and a former intelligence chief, described the Hamas office in Khartoum as “very humble” and “almost closed.” He dismissed claims that Islamic Jihad had any presence in Sudan.
Abu Mohammed Omar, Hamas’ representative in Sudan, said the group has had an information office in Khartoum since 1991. Omar confirmed that Islamic Jihad also had an office.
Asked if the government would close the Hamas office, el-Mahdi was noncommittal.
The government has also dismissed allegations that its troops are guilty of human rights abuses in Darfur, and hopes the deal with the southern insurgents will help solve the problems in western Sudan.
“Sharing power, sharing wealth, all those kind of things, are gong to be reflected, not only in the south, but in every state in the north as well, including the west and the east,” Mohammed said by telephone from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
The first U.S. sanctions were imposed on Sudan in 1989 when el-Bashir seized power in a coup.
Former President Bill Clinton treated Africa’s largest country as a rogue state and closed the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum in 1997. He added comprehensive trade sanctions that same year and launched a missile attack against the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998, alleging it was making precursors for chemical weapons.
Relations thawed slightly when President Bush took office in 2001, and the United States has backed the peace process. But the sanctions have remained, as have criticisms of Khartoum’s human rights record.
El-Mahdi said the government has cooperated with U.S. authorities since 2000 to prove Sudan has no links to terrorism and to get the sanctions lifted.
The cooperation has enabled the FBI and CIA to set up a “big station” in Khartoum and led to the exchange of information between U.S. and Sudanese security personnel on bin Laden, his followers and other Islamic groups that set up base in Sudan in the 1990s, el-Mahdi told AP in a recent interview.
Other Sudanese officials said U.S. authorities have inspected sites, such as laboratories in Khartoum University, to check whether Sudan was producing chemical weapons.
U.S. officials refused to comment on the details of Sudan’s cooperation. But an official in Washington said “they have done everything we have asked them to do.”
The cooperation continues as terror suspects show up on American radar screens in the region.
“In their information collection, they come across a name, they ask us, ‘Do you know anything about this man, did he come to Sudan before,’ things like that,” el-Mahdi said.
Bin Laden lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, setting up businesses and bringing his followers with him.
“At that time, we badly needed investors in our country,” el-Mahdi said.
Stephen Morrison, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Sudan has “compromised drastically” in the last 18 months because it realized its political survival is linked to having the sanctions lifted.
In a recent report, CSIS said Sudan could be a “critical proving ground” for Bush’s commitment to introduce democracy and openness in Muslim societies.
American companies are reportedly interested in investing in Sudan, particularly the country’s oil reserves first discovered by Chevron in the 1970s if sanctions are lifted.