US Offers Deal to Sudan on Terror State Listing
The New York Times reports:
WASHINGTON — President Obama has told Sudan that if it allows a politically sensitive referendum to go ahead in January, and abides by the results, the United States will move to take the country off its list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as next July, administration officials said Sunday.
The offer, conveyed to the Sudanese authorities over the weekend by Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, represents a significant sweetening of the package of incentives the administration offered to Sudan in September for its cooperation with the vote.
Under a peace agreement that ended years of civil war in Sudan, the government in Khartoum agreed to a referendum, now scheduled for Jan. 9, in which the people of southern Sudan will decide whether to secede from the north. They are expected to vote overwhelmingly to do so.
But as the date for the vote nears, there are persistent reports of foot-dragging by the Sudanese authorities in preparing for it, as well as fears of a new outbreak of violence if the north does not honor the results. Dividing Sudan is hugely complicated, since most of its oil fields lie in the south.
In September, the administration presented Sudan with incentives ranging from modest steps like the delivery of agricultural equipment to more sweeping measures, including debt relief, normalized diplomatic relations, the lifting of sanctions and the removal of Sudan from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, which it has been on since 1993.
Administration officials said then that they did not expect to take that last step until late 2011 or 2012, one official said, because it was also linked to a resolution of the violence in the Darfur region. But now the United States has made it contingent only on the referendum. The Sudanese government, another official said, had pushed in recent weeks for more clarity in the incentives.
“I believe a broad agreement is within reach if they act with the sense of urgency that is necessary to seize this historic opportunity,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement on Sunday as he left Sudan.
