Southern Sudan Welcomes Obama Administration’s New Sudan Policy

By Moyiga Nduru
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Southern Sudan’s ruling party welcomed the Obama administration’s new policy on Sudan that calls for the implementation of a peace accord between the north and south of the country.

“The policy is in line with the SPLM position,” Anne Itto, deputy secretary-general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said in a phone interview yesterday from Juba, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of Southern Sudan.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and U.S. envoy Scott Gration yesterday announced a new policy on Sudan after months of deliberations.

The administration held out the prospect of dropping sanctions on Sudan if the oil-producing North African nation eases the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, implements the north- south peace accord brokered by the U.S. in 2005, and refuses to harbor terrorists. The Bush administration sought to influence the Sudanese government in a similar way.

Tensions have risen between northern and the southern Sudan in recent months as the south prepares to hold a referendum in 2011 on whether to form an independent state.

The 2005 agreement, which called for the referendum, ended a 21-year civil war between Muslim northern Sudan and the mostly animist and Christian south. Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir’s government has refused to accept borders that international experts have proposed for the oil-rich area of Abyei.

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