واشنطن تنهي مهمة سفيرها في الخرطوم !!!

Quote: Al Hadi A. Khalifa The Sudanese-U.S. Relations: Some Serious Developments Underway Date: 02/05/2013 IF true and reflective of the official position, the recent U.S. diplomat's statement to the Sudanese Revolutionary Front in Kampala evinces a remarkable shift in Washington’s policy toward Khartoum. According to Sudan Vision of 25/04/2013, the diplomat informed the Front’s representatives that his country is not for violent regime change in Sudan, that the Sudanese armed opposition is too weak to control the situation if violent change occurs, and that the SPLM-N should engage in serious negotiations with the North Sudanese Government to reach a political settlement to their dispute. The U.S. diplomat's statement coincided with another statement by the American Chargé d'Affaires in Khartoum, Mr. Joseph Stanford, in which he confirmed that an NCP-U.S. meeting will take place in Washington to deal with a number of issues, including war on terrorism, the current talks with the SPLM-N in Addis Ababa, constitutional reform, etc. The U.S. has been at loggerheads with Sudan for as long as the lifetime of the present Regime. According to Washington, Sudan has been defiant and less responsive to Washington’s policy of fighting terrorism [being pan-Islamic] and less respectful to human rights [while fighting rebels]. Washington took several punitive measures against Khartoum that ranged from extending open support to the opposition, to the imposition of economic sanctions that lasted to this day, to prohibiting Khartoum from having access to international resources that fall under Washington’s control. Khartoum offered Washington many concessions but the deaf ear of the latter brought the situation to an impasse. The possible softening of Washington’s position toward Sudan finds expression in several facts. Washington believes - or is expected to believe - that its primary objective of helping South Sudan to secede from the North has been achieved. A report on Sudan published in 2011 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies stated that, in the South, “the U.S. had a unique opportunity to help shape the development of the new state, establish a strong partnership in a strategically important region of the world, and encourage the development of a democratic model. Concurrently, it believes that, for this State to remain in existence and grow faster, a strong State in the North should similarly be aided to exist. A weak and degenerated state in North Sudan could export debilitating problems to the South in view of the heavy trans-border movement of people from both countries and the longest border line in Africa that sets them apart. The betterment of relations with the state in the North of Sudan is part of this scheme: “Washington has expressed its willingness to normalize relations with Khartoum, and the successful staging of the Southern referendum has increased the likelihood of this possibility,” the report said. The zeal with which Washington pushed the matrix Agreement to a happy end obviously supports this argument. Washington is concerned with the Northern state’s viability not only for the sake of the Southern state, but also for the sake of the regional stability of North Africa. The political earthquakes that rocked Egypt and Libya and, to a lesser degree Mali, provided Washington with the lesson that what it terms as political Islam is mass-based, hard to suppress, and that to cope with it is the only workable foreign policy option. In the context, Washington clearly wants to see North Sudan united under an effective government that’s, at least, not a U.S. enemy if not a U.S. ally. The bottom line of thought that has presumably governed Washington’s policy is that if an Islamic state is efficient enough to maintain itself against failure and at the same time reliably contributes to regional stability is better assisted than resisted. The case of the failed state of Somalia and the insecurity consequences its failure has brought to the strategic Horn of Africa highlights the importance of the state’s effectiveness for regional stability. The miserable situation of the fragmented Sudanese opposition vis-à-vis the ruling NCP Government underlay the earthshaking statement of the above-mentioned diplomat! Washington observed that the Sudanese opposition cannot be trusted to create and maintain a viable, unified state in North Sudan that lives up to its expectations. The opposition is splintered, with armed and unarmed factions and parties that, in the absence of a strong government, could turn North Sudan into a stateless field in which human life becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, to borrow Hobbes’s words. The atrocious Front’s attack on the armless city of Om Ruwaba and other neighboring villages a few days ago has proven the validity of this assumption. The U.S. invitation to the Assistant of the President of the Republic, Deputy Chairman of the National Congress Party, Dr. Nafie Ali Nafie, to meet with public officials in the U.S. cannot be interpreted outside what we have said. The NCP official will go to the U.S. and see what Washington has to say to get things moving. Certainly, Washington will highly consider the NCP Government’s determination to grant more civil liberties to the people, write a permanent constitution, and talk to the opposition, both armed and unarmed, to resolve power-sharing problems. On its part, the NCP Government will grasp the opportunity to offer the type of concessions that simultaneously help the State to preserve its identity and efficiency and convince Washington to put an end to the long-drawn tug-of-war.