Three semi-related wire-service stories:
From AFP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...
A peace deal in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region could be reached by year’s end if southern Sudan officials join the talks, First Vice President Salva Kiir said.
"Our determination is to let us bring peace to Darfur by the end of the year," said Kiir at a forum of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
But Kiir expressed disappointment at US renewal of sanctions against the government as a sponsor of terrorism, and what he said was a lack of promised aid to rebuild the south in the wake of January’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with Khartoum.
Kiir spoke as the US State Department announced that Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will travel to Nairobi next week to attempt to reconcile feuding factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the main group fighting the government in Darfur.
The plunge of the SLM into a divisive power struggle following the election of a new leader, whom the group’s founder branded illegitimate, threatened to stall the Darfur peace talks in Abuja two weeks before they are scheduled to resume.
"All have agreed to go to Nairobi" to meet Zoellick, said Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
"The critical component here is that all sides see the United States as a critical player in trying to bring the SLM together," Frazer said.
"Our message to them getting back to Darfur is that you cannot win friends or win advantage at the negotiating table if you are attacking civilians," she said.
"And if you want the US to help you and to provide assistance to you in terms of negotiations, then you have to honor the ceasefire" with the government in Darfur.
Kiir also serves as president of Sudan’s southern government, which signed the US-brokered CPA with Khartoum in January to end a 21-year civil war between the north and the south. He said he believed the CPA could be a model for the upcoming Abuja talks, in which his southern government will take part for the first time.
His officials will make proposals he believed the Darfur rebels will find attractive, but declined to give any details in advance of the talks.
But Kiir meanwhile said that implementation of January’s peace accord could be impeded by US sanctions on Khartoum.
Washington announced the renewal of the sanctions Tuesday just as Kiir was meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, timing Kiir called "a very bad coincidence".
The United States has applied annual sanctions, including an economic embargo, against Sudan since 1997 because Khartoum’s actions and policies "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States".
Sudan would ask for humanitarian exemptions for railway and riverboat equipment in order to restore major transportation links between the north and the south, Kiir said.
The links were necessary to transport home thousands of people displaced by the lengthy civil war, he said.
But Kiir added that rebuilding southern Sudan was further imperiled by the lack of aid disbursements, despite pledges of 4.5 billion dollars for the next three years at an Oslo donors conference in April.
"Pledging is one thing... nobody has paid," Kiir said, noting that the World Bank will manage the money.
"To enjoy peace you must have a peace dividend," he said.
According to the [State Department], Zoellick, who has visited Sudan three times this year, will also travel to Khartoum, Darfur and Juba in the south to evaluate the situation after the CPA pact.
From Reuters...
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick heads to Sudan next week to push rebels and the government toward peace in crisis-torn Darfur amid concerns by some lawmakers and rights groups that Washington is being too soft on the Islamist leadership in Khartoum.
Zoellick's trip comes as peace talks between fractious rebel leaders and the government are stuttering, and an upsurge in violence in the western region of Darfur is drawing increasing global attention to the rising death toll and the suffering of some 2 million refugees.
The United States has accused the Khartoum government and allied militias of genocide in Darfur, where the violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
"Large-scale killing in Darfur has subsided, but a recent upswing of violence is a serious danger," Zoellick said on Friday, two days before his fourth trip to Africa's largest country since April.
"Darfur rebel groups are fighting among themselves. Any spark could set off a wildfire, so all of the key parties have important work to do to keep things on track," he said in a news release. Zoellick will also travel to Kenya for talks with the main rebel leaders.
Eleven months after helping forge a landmark peace deal to end a protracted war in southern Sudan, Zoellick will also prod members of the new national unity government to implement difficult but vital elements of the north-south accord, including demobilizing troops and defining internal borders.
The United States says the successful implementation of the southern Sudan peace deal is essential to convince the Darfur rebels that a similar accord will bring them the political voice and economic support they seek.
"We are committed to peace in Sudan," Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of State for African affairs, told reporters on Friday. "So we'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing on the peace talks."
CRITICS SAY U.S. SOFT ON SUDAN
Despite the pledges, critics -- including several vocal Republican and Democratic members of Congress -- have accused the U.S. government of being too easy on Sudan, which won praise for its counter-terrorism cooperation since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
They say Washington must press Sudanese leaders harder to stop any support for the "Janjaweed" militiamen, who stand accused of a widespread campaign of rape, killing and burning in non-Arab villages during the 2 1/2 year-old Darfur revolt.
Non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of monopolizing wealth and power and marginalizing Darfur.
John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group think tank said there has been a lot of internal government debate on how to deal with Sudan, and he believed the Bush administration had softened its approach because of Sudan's value in the counter-terrorism fight.
Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin and Jon Corzine, as well as Republican Sens. Mike DeWine and Sam Brownback, called on President George W. Bush this week to request additional funds for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, as lawmakers cut back $50 million in support for them.
"This is simply unacceptable and is a tragedy for the people of Darfur," said Rev. Richard Cizik, a vice president at the National Association of Evangelicals.
Frazer said Washington, which has provided $160 million to help secure peace in Darfur, was keeping up the pressure on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his government to work harder toward peace.
She said Washington was using carrots and sticks -- which she described as the United States' ability to help or hinder Sudan's international acceptance -- to push for an accord, hopefully by a previously stated year-end goal.
Amid growing congressional unease over the situation in Sudan, the State Department's No. 2 official will travel to the East African country next week to seek progress in resolving its multiple crises, including the continuing human mayhem in Darfur.
In an initial stop in Kenya, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will meet leaders of the faction-plagued Darfur rebel movement in hopes of encouraging them to establish a unified position for peace negotiations with Sudanese government officials. Talks are under way in Nigeria.
The glum mood among members of Congress and elsewhere stems from a spike in violence over the past month in the Darfur region of western Sudan and slow movement toward implementing the peace accord that ended the North-South war last January.
``Any spark could set off a wildfire, so all of the key parties have important work to do to keep things on track,'' Zoellick said Friday. The trip will be his fourth to Sudan since he took office nine months ago.
The assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, attributed the violence in Sudan to general lawlessness, to the factionalism among Darfur rebel groups, and to the Janjaweed Arab militias who have been responsible for most of the killing in Darfur since early 2003.
``We will put pressure on the government to stop any support it is providing the Janjaweed,'' she said.
The January agreement sets out power- and wealth-sharing goals for the North and South. That conflict is separate from the Darfur violence.
Zoellick will meet with northern and southern leaders in Khartoum to encourage them to forge ahead with implementation of the accord. He and his party then will travel west to Darfur, where he will visit one of many camps housing more than 2 million displaced people in Darfur.
Zoellick also will visit with commanders and troops from the African Union's 6,000 peacekeepers in Darfur.
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