WASHINGTON AND NAIROBI, KENYA — After years of worldwide outrage over suffering in Darfur, the Obama administration will soon launch a new policy that could soften some longtime U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government implicated in the large-scale killings and displacement of African tribespeople.
White House officials say that specific conditions would have to be met before sanctions would be lifted, and that Sudan could face even tougher sanctions if its leaders act in bad faith. But President Obama's handpicked envoy to Sudan, J. Scott Gration, said in an interview Monday that the Khartoum government, which expelled humanitarian groups this year after an international court accused Sudan's president of war crimes in Darfur, has shown a willingness to work toward stabilizing Darfur in order to allow aid to be delivered.
"We see that there is a spirit of cooperation and an attitude of wanting to help," Gration said.
The American envoy acknowledged that lifting sanctions could help bolster the Sudanese government, but he said the new policy would be prudent and cautious.
"There's ways that we can roll back these sanctions in a way that allows us to lift the restrictions we need, such that the government continues to be sanctioned and military equipment continues to be sanctioned," he said.
The new approach has sparked fierce debate among Obama's advisors and is causing consternation among some of his strongest supporters, who had expected the president to toughen U.S. policy toward a government that he had sharply criticized as untrustworthy during last year's presidential campaign.
Broad restrictions were enacted by the Clinton administration 12 years ago against the Islamist-led regime in response to Khartoum's alleged harboring of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and to the oppression of Christians and other minorities as part of Sudan's civil war.
U.S. foreign aid and almost all commercial ties are severely restricted.
Even floating the idea of lifting some sanctions -- something the Bush administration also contemplated -- is politically controversial.
Darfur has for years unified an unusual and vocal coalition of Hollywood stars, human rights activists, African Americans and evangelicals. As candidates last year, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton all vowed to maintain a hard line with Khartoum.
