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Obama envoy visits Sudan amid pressure on Beshir
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Obama envoy visits Sudan amid pressure on Beshir
AFP - 57 minutes ago
WASHINGTON, (AFP) - - US envoy Scott Gration heads for Sudan Wednesday as President Barack Obama turns up the heat on his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir to allow aid groups back into war-torn Darfur.
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The Sudan envoy's mission raised hopes among a leading activist that the new administration will also get countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda to pressure Beshir to reverse course.
Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman, said Gration will visit Khartoum, Darfur, the main southern city of Juba and the flashpoint oil town of Abyei before returning to Khartoum to meet with government officials.
State Department officials said Gration's plane was due Wednesday in Khartoum.
The US government fears not only another humanitarian disaster in Darfur , a western region where Sudanese military actions have led to war crimes charges against Beshir, but also the collapse of a 2005 North-South peace accord.
Fighting in Abyei last year had threatened a return to Sudan's two-decade civil war -- the longest in Africa -- which only ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.
But, Duguid said, the fate of the people of Darfur was an immediate concern.
Gration was to meet with a "wide range of interlocutors, particularly those who are empowered to make policy decisions that can try and put Sudan on the path to a peace," Duguid said without naming them.
"We have to work on a mechanism to get the NGOs (non-government organizations) back in country, to get the aid flowing again without disruption," he added, referring to the groups expelled from Darfur.
Obama, speaking after meeting with his special envoy on Monday, said he hopes to find a way for humanitarian workers to resume their work in Darfur.
"We have to figure out a mechanism to get those NGOs back in place, to reverse that decision, or to find some mechanism whereby we avert a enormous humanitarian crisis," Obama said.
Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition who was at Obama's meeting with Gration and congressmen, said he felt reassured by the president's commitment to Darfur.
"We think it's an important step that he has been appointed and that it is someone who has this close relationship with the president and the confidence of the president," Fowler told AFP.
He hoped that the Obama administration -- which boasts a multilateral approach to foreign policy -- will recruit the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda to get Beshir to change course.
"The diplomatic pressure would really be good. I think so far all of the public messaging from those countries has been pretty supportive of Khartoum," Fowler said.
But Arab leaders, who wrapped up an annual summit late Monday in Doha, united firmly behind Beshir against his arrest warrant over Darfur issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
"We stress our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC decision against President Omar al-Beshir," the leaders said in their final statement, as read out by Arab League chief Amr Mussa.
But Fowler held out hope that China, which has key oil interests in Sudan, could help.
"They've provided a lot of diplomatic support to Khartoum. If they wanted to, they could make a contribution to the solution," he said.
Gration, Fowler added, had told the White House meeting that he personally knew China's special envoy to Darfur, Liu Guijin, from when they both worked in Nairobi several years ago.
"He acknowledged the importance of China and he mentioned just coincidentally that he already has this relationship with the special envoy," said the Save Darfur executive.
US officials said Gration's mission will contribute to the Obama administration's review of policy toward Sudan, but also acknowledged privately they were not sure how much access he would get in the country.
Gration, a former air force general, was appointed special envoy for Sudan earlier this month as Washington increased pressure on Beshir to reverse his expulsion of aid groups from Darfur.
The expulsion came days after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Beshir for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out during the six-year armed conflict in Darfur.
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US President Barack Obama with Sudan Special Envoy General Scott Gration during a meeting ahead of Grations' trip to Sudan at the White House in Washington.
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