British envoy to join wider push for peace

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has announced his government's appointment of Alan Goulty as the new UK Special Representative for Sudan, saying that it demonstrated "Britain's determination to play its full part in a coordinated international push for peace in Sudan". Goulty was the British ambassador to Sudan from 1995 to 1999, having previously served in the country from 1972 to 1975, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office stated on Tuesday. "Peace is the prerequisite to development in Sudan, Africa's largest country," said Straw, commenting on the appointment. "Britain is determined to help Africa achieve its potential. Tackling conflict - the main root cause of poverty - is an essential part of this." "The international community now has the best opportunity for many years to help the Sudanese to reach a truly just and lasting peace," and Britain was intent on playing its part, he added. The current phase of the Sudanese civil war, running since 1983, has involved a northern government that is largely Arab and Muslim, against a southern insurgency that is largely black and significantly Christian - but the war is increasingly a contest for power, resources and ideology, as well as religion, between a non-democratic centre and marginalised groups from all parts of the country, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). [see www.intl-crisis-group.org/] The war has defied every attempt so far at resolution by neighbours, regional organisations - including the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) - and major international players. Sudan had welcomed the British decision to appoint a special representative, with the presidential peace adviser, Ghazi Salah al-Din, promising to cooperate fully with all sincere efforts to achieve peace, Reuters news agency reported on Sunday, 10 February. In a statement, Salah al-Din said Sudan was pleased to note "a positive change" in British policy towards Sudan, and that a recent visit by International Development Minister Clare Short had convinced Khartoum that Britain could play a constructive role in bringing peace, the report added. Short visited Sudan from 6 to 11 January, when she met government delegates, representatives of warring factions, church leaders, relief workers and UN officials as part of a renewed British effort to push for peace, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) reported at that time. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had flagged the imminent appointment of a Special Representative to Sudan to help the push for peace in that country during a trip to Nigeria on 7 February, when he said that supplying extensive humanitarian assistance was no substitute for establishing a lasting peace. "There are two African conflicts, in particular, where, with greater international attention, we could deliver peace: the Great Lakes and Sudan," Blair said. The ICG, among other actors, has been pushing strongly of late for "a major international peace effort" to capitalise on a window of opportunity - the result of a number of converging factors, internal and external - that offers "a glimmer of hope that Sudan's agony could soon end". Among the factors it identified were: a government of Sudan yearning to distance itself from past links with Osama bin Laden after the 11 September events, and to end its relative international isolation; and, the poor state of the international oil market and a huge, related debt overhang for the government in Khartoum, which has borrowed heavily against anticipated oil earnings. It also included, in this respect, the military calculations of the government and its main opposition, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and an increased international engagement with Sudanese issues, not least by the US administration of President George W. Bush. "There is a momentous opportunity in the coming months, perhaps the best opportunity in the past 18-19 years, to construct a serious, viable peace process - but if that is not taken, the political will and the window of opportunity may be lost for years to come," said ICG co-director for Africa, John Prendergast, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday. "The time to create a single, multilateral, high-level and sustained peace process is now," he said. "What is needed is a major new international peace effort, building on existing regional efforts and involving a big investment in diplomacy, incentives and pressures."