KHARTOUM, 28 September 2003 — The United States has agreed to lift its sanctions on Sudan and remove the country from its list of nations sponsoring terrorism, independent Al-Rai Al-Aam daily reported yesterday.
Reporting from New York, the newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail as saying “lifting the sanctions and taking the Sudan’s name from the list of terrorism have been agreed upon and what remains now is the timing of making those steps.”
The agreement was reached after meetings Ismail held with several US officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner, the newspaper reported.
On Friday, the United States lauded a security agreement reached this week between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, calling it a “historic” accord that should boost efforts for permanent settlement of the conflict.
The rebels led by John Garang, and Khartoum, signed the agreement on Thursday in Kenya. It was seen as a key step toward a full peace agreement that would put an end to the longest and one of the bloodiest civil wars in Africa.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday phoned President Omar Bashir to congratulate him on the deal and affirm American commitments to speeding up the conclusion of a final peace agreement, the paper said. “Lifting the sanctions and taking the Sudan’s name from the list of terrorism have been agreed upon and what remains now is the timing of making those steps,” it quoted Ismail as saying.
Sudan’s civil war erupted in 1983 when the SPLA took up arms to end domination of the mainly Christian and animist south by the Muslim north. It has since killed more than 1.5 million people and displaced four million others.
The United States has been pressing both sides to negotiate in good faith and has threatened to tighten sanctions against Khartoum and step up assistance to the rebels should it determine the government is not cooperating in the peace process. In April, US President George W. Bush determined that Khartoum was negotiating in good faith and waived the imposition of new sanctions but must make a new evaluation next month.
Sudan’s top envoy in talks to end a 20-year-old civil war said yesterday the latest round of breakthrough negotiations formed the basis for “lasting peace” in Africa’s largest country. “We are building a house with a firm foundation. We have laid the foundation for a lasting peace,” Sudan’s First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha told thousands of cheering northern and southern Sudanese on his arrival in Khartoum.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese turned out to give Taha a hero’s welcome on his return from Kenya. In a speech to about 30,000 people at Khartoum airport, Taha said his government and the SPLA had laid the groundwork for a peace that would benefit all Sudanese people.
“We have laid down the foundation stone of an edifice of peace which will safeguard the rights of all people and will open up avenues for development, construction and stability,” he said. He told the crowd, some holding aloft anti-war banners, that the agreement “has put an end to the war for good and animosity and the Satan of war will never infiltrate our ranks.”
“The power sharing will not be a question of distributing positions as political bribes,” said Taha, who appeared exhausted by three weeks of tough talks, the heat and the large throng of people who waited hours to greet him. Peace talks are due to resume on a committee level on Oct. 6, Kenyan chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo said.
Meanwhile, Sudanese refugees in a camp in northwestern Uganda said Friday they were optimistic that peace talks would help them resume normal lives.
“Let the government and the SPLA sympathize with us. It is our hope that this time they reach an agreement,” said Anato Kanis, a secondary school student who has been a refugee for the past nine years.
“A lot of blood has been shed, we have cried and endured enough suffering,” he told Agence France Presse in Kampala. Like Anato, many refugees had pinned their hopes on the talks in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, 80 km northwest of Nairobi.
