Khartoum warns against “unbalanced” US legislation

The government of Sudan has called on the US Senate and Congress to reconsider and renegotiate the final form of the Sudan Peace Act to come before them, lest it “encourage the war and prolong a war that has gone on long enough”. To take such a measure without understanding the issues involved would be a betrayal of American values and do a great disservice to the peoples of Sudan, according to a statement from the Sudanese embassy in Washington DC, USA, on 17 August. It cited a statement by the Comboni Catholic Missionaries that the war had become a struggle for power, business and greed. “Global interests have the Sudanese resources at heart, not the wellbeing of the Sudanese people. Religion is distorted and misused as a means for [serving] other interests,” it quoted the missionaries as saying. The government of Sudan welcomed US involvement in the search for a just peace, “but within the fundamental principles of balance, wisdom and fair play,” the Sudanese embassy statement said. “The Sudan Peace Act, in its current form, is none of these,” it added. The US State Department has clearly defined its opposition to provisions of a version of the Sudan Peace Act already passed by Congress, which would prohibit an entity engaged in the development of oil resources in Sudan from raising capital or trading securities in the United States. “Prohibiting access to capital markets... would run counter to global US support for open markets, would undermine financial market competitiveness, and could end up impeding the free flow of capital worldwide,” it said. A different version of the Sudan Peace Act passed by the US Senate does not contain the capital markets provision. Apart from the proposed capital market sanctions, the State Department said the Sudan Peace Act was an important piece of legislation, addressing what Secretary of State Colin Powell had called “perhaps one of the greatest tragedies in the world today”. What was happening in Sudan - “the bombings of innocent civilians, the tolerance for slave raiding, the denial of religious freedom, uprooting thousands of civilians by the continued military actions of both sides” - had shocked all persons of conscience, and the State Department shared the outrage that was expressed in the Act, it said. The State Department said it was still waiting to see how things turned out in the Senate and Congress before deciding on whether Powell would recommend a presidential veto of the legislation if the final version contained the limitation on access to capital markets. Meanwhile, US counter-terrorism analysts have concluded that the terrorists involved in a 1995 assassination attempt on President Husni Mubarak of Egypt no longer enjoyed the protection of Sudan, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday. The suspects in the attempted assassination of Mubarak in Ethiopia were afterwards believed to have fled to Sudan, but US experts had concluded that they were no longer there, it said. Sudan has tried to convince the US - which has the country on a list of seven countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism, and applies severe sanctions on it - that it did not support international terrorism, and has largely mended relations with Egypt and Ethiopia, according to news agencies. American officials were still trying to determine if Sudan had ended its support for terrorism generally, but the US had held constructive talks with the Khartoum government, and believed it was moving in the right direction, according to a State Department official cited by AP. As a result, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was considering whether or not to support an Egyptian move to have UN Security Council sanctions - imposed in 1996 in an attempt to have Sudan hand over the Mubarak plot suspects - removed, the agency reported. In imposing those sanctions, the UN Security Council called on Sudan to extradite the suspects in the 1995 attack on Mubarak, and to cease providing support and safe haven for terrorists. The sanctions require member states to restrict the size of Sudanese diplomatic missions in their countries, and the travel of Sudanese officials through their territory. International and regional organisations are also called upon to refrain from holding conferences in Sudan - though this had not always happened in practice. Both Egypt, on whose behalf the sanctions were imposed, and Ethiopia support the lifting of the sanctions, according to news organisations. Washington recently persuaded Sudan to delay a request by a group of non-permanent members of the UN Security Council to lift the UN sanctions, the two countries agreeing to delay any action on lifting the measures until September, because there was still an (undefined) outstanding issue to be settled between them, they added. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said on Tuesday that the US understood Sudan may try to have the sanctions lifted in September, but since that would be an initiative of the government of Sudan, “it would be premature to comment on any Council vote on that, which at this point remains simply hypothetical”. The US also maintains certain unilateral sanctions against Sudan. Among other things, according to Reeker, most goods or services of Sudanese origin may not be imported into the US without a licence. Most property of the government of Sudan in the US, or in the possession or control of an American citizen, had been frozen, he said. Financial dealings with Sudan were generally prohibited, including the performance by any US citizen of any contract, and no goods, technology or services may be exported to Sudan either directly or through third countries without a licence, he added. Other than that, Reeker said, the US was exploring ways by which to support the search for a just peace in Sudan, “because it’s through the peace process that the grave humanitarian and human rights crisis in Sudan, including the bombing of civilians and slavery, will be resolved”. The US was committed to continuing to provide relief assistance to the civilian population at risk while its overall policy review on Sudan, including a reviewing of its status as a designated state sponsor of terrorism, was ongoing, he added.