Sudan pleased with US envoy’s remarks on terrorism

CARIO — Sudan’s U.N. ambassador said Friday that his government was pleased with an American envoy’s assertion that there is no evidence to support the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Sudan told a Senate panel on Thursday that U.S. sanctions linked to that designation were hurting efforts to help people affected by conflict in Sudan. On Friday, Sudan’s U.N. ambassador welcomed the comments, saying that his country was a victim of terror, not a sponsor of it.

The Sudanese government’s opponents were critical of the American envoy’s remarks. One of them, a top leader of the rebels fighting government forces in the country’s western Darfur region, said the American’s views were naive.

The Obama administration is grappling with how to deal with Sudan’s government about Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced, and how to keep a separate conflict between the country’s north and south from re-igniting.

Sudan, for its part, is pushing for stronger diplomatic ties with the United States, the lifting of sanctions and its removal from the U.S. list of states said to sponsor terrorism.

The U.S. envoy, Scott Gration, said Thursday in Washington that Sudan’s government has been helpful in stopping the flow of weapons and in dealing with key members of the terror group al-Qaida.

Sanctions, Gration said, affect the ability of aid workers to ship in heavy equipment to build roads and other crucial material. “At some point, we’re going to have to unwind some of these sanctions so we can do the very things we need to do,” Gration told the Senate hearing.

Gration also maintained that the violence in Darfur — where the government has been accused of backing militiamen responsible for atrocities — no longer amounts to a “genocide.”

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, said his country “values the positive indications” from Gration, according to a report by Sudan’s official news agency, SUNA.

Mohamad repeated a call for the sanctions to be lifted and for the U.S. to remove Sudan from the list of states that sponsor terrorism.

Sudan’s Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels in Darfur since 2003 and its president has been accused of orchestrating atrocities against civilians there.

President Omar al-Bashir is being sought by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement called Gration’s views “naive” and said they lack any accurate intelligence.

Gration “is acting like a foreign minister for al-Bashir and with that he’s harmed the unjustly treated in Darfur and is only strengthening the government,” Ibrahim told The Associated Press by telephone from Darfur. “This man is inappropriate, he is hasty and looking for quick results,” he said of the U.S. diplomat.

He said the Sudanese government “succeeded in deceiving this guy. Now he is protecting them.”

Associated Press Writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.