US lawmaker urges Obama to fill Sudan’s special envoy post
August 2, 2013 (WASHINGTON) – A key lawmaker in the United States House of Representative sent a letter today to president Barack Obama urging him to quickly choose a special envoy for Sudan which has been vacant for effectively almost five months.
No reason was given but sources attributed Lyman’s resignation to health reasons. His departure was effective last March according Larry André who is Director of the Office of the Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan at the U.S. State Department
“I have written you on more than one occasion about the persistent vacancy of the Sudan Special Envoy post, which has been unfilled for nearly five months. This is indefensible given the current state of affairs in Sudan,” US Rep Frank Wolf said in his letter sent to Sudan Tribune.
Last May the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he plans to appoint an envoy to Sudan and South Sudan but his pledge has yet to materialize.
A coalition of Sudan activist groups in Washington known as Act for Sudan sent a letter to Kerry last March imploring him not to nominate former US ambassador to Khartoum Timothy Carney for the job citing what they perceived as his sympathetic views with the Sudanese government.
They recalled Carney’s testimony in 2009 at the U.S. Congress in which he voiced his opposition to efforts aimed at isolating Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir who has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He proposed instead to defer the ICC warrant, sending an ambassador to Khartoum and removing Sudan from the state department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Rep. Wolf in his letter also chided Obama for seeking to remove language in a bill he authored that would punish countries receiving Bashir by cutting off U.S. aid.
“Last year I offered an amendment to the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill which would have cut non-humanitarian foreign assistance to any nation that allowed Sudanese President Omar Bashir, an internationally indicted war criminal, into their country without arresting him. The amendment was adopted with bipartisan support by voice vote,” he wrote.
“Sadly that support never materialized. In fact your administration actively sought to remove this language from the final bill. Meanwhile, Bashir remains free to travel where he pleases, and the people of Sudan see no end in sight to their suffering and U.S. policy is in tatters. The FY 2014 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, which just last week passed out of the full committee, included language consistent with the amendment I offered last year. In seeking to isolate Bashir, our options are limited but far from nonexistent,” he added.
Wolf underscored that Sudan’s issue “has historically been a bipartisan issue” and recounted Obama’s campaign promises in this regard.
The U.S. administration came under fire this year for inviting Sudanese presidential assistant and vice chairman of ruling National Congress Party (NCP) Nafie Ali Nafie.
Later the invitation was revoked in the wake of Bashir’s decision to shutdown down pipelines carrying oil from landlocked South Sudan saying that the latter continues to back anti-Khartoum insurgents.
The African Union has managed to convince Bashir to delay the closure so that mediation committees can work on verifying claims of rebel support by both sides.
(ST)