Croker declines to be US political envoy

The leading candidate to become the US government’s special diplomatic envoy for Sudan has refused to take the position, Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday, 15 June. Chester Croker, who headed the US State Department’s Africa Bureau for eight years during the Reagan administration, was expected to be named in the post but rejected the offer to return to international diplomacy, citing personal reasons, the report stated. Croker felt that attention from pressure groups within the US, including the Congressional Black Caucus and several conservative Christian groups, would inhibit diplomacy and make the quest for peace in Sudan an especially difficult one, AP added, quoting diplomatic sources.

During a four-nation tour of Africa in April (during which he focused on the Sudanese civil war and humanitarian crisis in talks with Ugandan and Kenyan diplomats, and with humanitarian agencies), US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he wanted to “re-energise” the peace process in Sudan. The US stated then that the Bush administration’s review of Sudan policy was still underway, and that Natsios’ appointment to coordinate US government humanitarian response and liaison with other donors, the UN and all NGOs was neither instead of a presidential special envoy nor would he be such an envoy. “The US administration’s full review of Sudan policy is still very much in progress, including consideration of the proposal for a special envoy,” the US embassy in Khartoum stated in mid-May.