White House Unveils Sudan Strategy
WASHINGTON — Laying out the basic outlines of his Sudan policy, President Obama said Monday that he would renew “tough sanctions” against the Khartoum government and increase pressure if it failed to improve the dire situation in Darfur — but he also held out the possibility of incentives if Sudan cooperated.
“As the United States and our international partners meet our responsibility to act, the government of Sudan must meet its responsibilities to take concrete steps in a new direction,” Mr. Obama said in a statement released by the White House.
The strategy, worked out after months of intensive debate, is meant to build pressure on Sudan to end the abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced in its vast Darfur region. It places a greater emphasis on incentives than the Bush administration policy, but officials were quick to stress that there were also additional punishments on the table.
The president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for his role in human rights abuses in Darfur, and the new policy has come under criticism from some human rights advocates for its willingness to engage with his government.
A Sudanese presidential adviser, Ghazi Salahadin, said after the policy was announced that the new approach had some “positive points” and represented a “new Obama spirit,” but he expressed disappointment that the president had referred explicitly to genocide, Reuters reported from the capital, Khartoum.
Washington officials offered few details on Monday about the policy beyond its general aims. The United States, Mr. Obama’s statement said, would work to end gross human rights abuses, including genocide, in Darfur, seek implementation of the peace agreement that ended a war between northern and southern Sudan, and ensure that Sudan not serve as a haven for terrorists.
“If the government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace, there will be incentives; if it does not, then there will be increased pressure imposed by the United States and the international community,” the statement said.
Speaking at a news conference at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, retired, the president’s special envoy to Sudan, and Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, did not provide details on what incentives might be offered to Sudan. Mrs. Clinton said that the administration had “a menu of incentives and disincentives, political and economic, that we will be looking to,” but added that it was in a classified addendum to the strategy document.
As a general sense of the new policy began emerging late last week, advocates of a tougher approach expressed concern that the administration — by offering incentives and playing down tougher sanctions — was taking too soft a line on Sudan.
Ms. Rice, however, emphasized that the new policy did not amount to a free pass, and that the government would pay a price for bad behavior. Along those lines, Mr. Obama said he would renew this week the current sanctions against Sudan, known as the declaration of a National Emergency with respect to Sudan.
“There will be no rewards for the status quo, no incentives without tangible and concrete progress,” Ms. Rice said. “There will be significant consequences for parties that backslide or simply stand still. All parties will be held to account.”
General Gration had irked some members of Congress by saying that he saw no reason to keep Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terror, and by arguing that some sanctions were unhelpful, comments that jolted those who believed Mr. Obama had promised a tougher line against the government.
There was no mention Monday of dropping Sudan from the terrorism list. Asked by a reporter whether he had “lost out” in the policy debate, General Gration said, “I fully support this strategy.” The general had said in his initial briefing at the State Department that Sudan was suffering the “remnants of genocide” — painting a more positive picture of the somewhat less violent situation now in the Darfur region than other administration officials have done.
But Mr. Obama, in his statement on Monday, used no such qualifier. “We must seek a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur,” he said.
In recent months, analysts both inside and outside the United States government have reported that ”low-intensity” skirmishes have replaced systematic slaughter by government-supported militants on one side and rebel groups on the other. However, systematic abuses continue to occur and millions of people are still displaced.
One human rights group, the Save Darfur Coalition, cautiously welcomed the administration’s statements, saying, “The policy is built around a balance of incentives and pressures similar to what Save Darfur and its partners have been calling for.”
But Jerry Fowler, president of the coalition, said that incentives should not be granted before there is “concrete and lasting progress” in Sudan, both in ending violence and abuses and in ensuring political openness. He said that the United States should build multilateral support for both incentives and pressures, and he called for “substantial personal involvement from President Obama.”
