UNITED NATIONS -- — The U.S. is offering to gradually normalize relations with Sudan if the government in Khartoum settles issues such as the Darfur crisis and carries out elections next year, U.S. and Sudanese diplomats said Friday.
Sudan would have to remove obstacles to the deployment of a U.N.-led peacekeeping force, stop violence against civilians in Darfur, release U.S. shipping containers stuck in customs and carry out the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between north and south Sudan, including elections in 2009, officials said.
Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, called it "a strategic shift," made possible by his government's "exemplary" cooperation on terrorism matters.
"Each side is exchanging papers on each aspect," he said. "The biggest reward would be normal relations with the U.S."
But some officials on both sides were skeptical. The U.S. has previously offered to improve diplomatic ties if Sudan met certain demands, but after Khartoum did so, relations remained unchanged.
Richard Williamson, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, confirmed that he discussed the Bush administration's incentives and requirements with President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir during a meeting last month in Khartoum. The U.S. offered to restore full diplomatic ties, lift sanctions and remove Khartoum from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism, Williamson said.
"There needs to be progress on the humanitarian and security side before there can be progress on other issues of concern to both sides," he said. "And we try to be very clear and be specific about the timing and what sort of things that are required."
He declined to provide details.
"Right now this is a discussion between the government of Sudan and the government of the United States, and it helps no one if we start to negotiate in public," he said. "The bottom-line goal is you have got to alleviate suffering and provide enough security on the ground so that people can return home in Darfur. Short of that, nothing else matters."
To help the process, the U.S. is increasing pressure on the U.N. to speed the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur, pushing for 3,600 new troops in Sudan's western region by June.
In a letter delivered Thursday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Williamson criticized delays in sending troops to Darfur, and asked the United Nations' peacekeeping department to be more flexible in its requirements for troops and equipment.
