The new envoy to Sudan in the eye of Sudanese pressBy: Abdul-Aziz Ali

2013-08-31 19:58:00
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Donald Booth Donald Booth

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By: Abdul-Aziz Ali Omer

The South-Sudan proposed referendum on Abyei lies a month ahead. The arrival of Donald Booth, the newly –appointed U.S envoy has coincided with this sensational development. How does the Sudanese press look at the event of appointing new envoy? Here is an example of local reaction. Hibba Mahmoud in “Akhir Lahaza” an official Gazette in an issue of August ,29th ,2013 in a report under the caption “ The new Sudan’s envoy: the policy of carrot and stick “ posed an overhanging question: Would, the new Envoy to South Sudan and Sudan succeed in sealing the fate of Abyei and other thorny issues of the hour including transporting oil ,joint security border and the billeting of South Sudan to combatants of SPLM –North and Darfur insurgents . Such a question resembles the query of George Bush to Gorbechev, a Soviet leader in one of U.N debates about the prospect of a safe investment in the Soviet Union. Gorbechev laughed. “Mr. Vice-president even Jesus Christ couldn’t answer that question. . George Bush asked of the consequences of a venture in an alien land. We ask the occidental of the implications and remedy of our self made blunder in our own land! That seems un-reasonable if not ridiculous. While reading Hibba’s report, my eyes kept returning to the attached photo of an envoy with a creased wrinkle, lost to his ears in thinking of one of those questions Christ can’t answer on the pulpit of Sudan. He put his fist close to his nostril as if he is going to bleed from the heart of grief for Sudan, a politically fleeced Sudan. That was more expressive than the Russian idiom.

Hibba asked Dr. Jamal Rustum, a Sudanese political analyst of what he thinks of the successive appointment of envoys to Sudan, he answered “Envoys are unable to impinge on the U.S decisions connected to the lobby of Jewish community. He said. “But, they can be a reverberation of events in Sudan” he added. He urged the government to give the envoy true information, a powerful and convincing vision for resolving the question of Abyei to rely on without resorting to South Sudan view. His statement has given a hint of the North Sudan fear of U.S favoritism towards the South enabling it to assert it’s influence.

Hibba went on to describe the positive obsolete stances of the predecessors of the new envoy such as removing the name of Sudan from the list of terrorist states and the proposal of stimulating the country.



The Abyei issue, the report concludes is one of the U.S priorities and the reason of the dispatch of an envoy to Sudan to take hold on the finer thread of relations that swing between the carrot and stick policy.