United States President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a new strategy on Sudan, offering incentives if the Khartoum government worked toward peace, but said it faced tougher steps if it failed to act.
"Our conscience and our interests in peace and security call upon the United States and the international community to act with a sense of urgency and purpose," Obama said in a statement.
Unveiling the new U.S. policy toward Sudan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said genocide was taking place in Darfur and the U.S. focus would be on protecting civilians, helping displaced persons and ensuring that militias were disarmed.
"First, we must seek a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur," Obama said, in the statement issued as the State Department unveiled a new U.S.-Sudan strategy.
"If the Government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace, there will be incentives, if it does not, then there will be increased pressure imposed by the United States and the international community."
Sudan’s response
In first response Sudan said Obama’s new policy on Sudan contains positives and is one of engagement, despite a US description of events in Darfur as genocide.
"Compared to previous policies there are positive points… we don’t see the extreme ideas and suggestions which we used to see in the past," Ghazi Salaheddin, adviser to President Omar al-Beshir, told reporters.
These ideas ranged from "calling for military intervention in the Sudan, to enforcing a no-fly zone in Darfur," Salaheddin explained.
"I will say it is a strategy of engagement, not a strategy of isolation," he added.
Carrot and stick
The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur since 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government. Khartoum puts the death toll closer to 10,000.
The new Obama policy toward Sudan will include "a menu of incentives and disincentives," Clinton said. She refused to specify what they might be.
Obama’s new special envoy, Scott Gration, has argued that Sudan’s many problems can only be resolved with the cooperation of the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. In March, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Bashir for war crimes.
The Bush administration relied on sanctions as its key leverage against Bashir’s government. Clinton said Obama’s administration was committed to sanctions as a tool to put pressure on Sudan’s government.
Some human rights groups, frustrated by the world’s failure to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, have expressed disappointment at Washington’s failure to take the tough line on Sudan that Obama supported during his campaign