US envoy to press two Sudans to talk
WASHINGTON — A US envoy headed Monday to Sudan and newly independent South Sudan to press the two nations to resolve lingering disputes and end the violence in a flashpoint border region.
Princeton Lyman, the US special envoy on Sudan, will urge leaders in Khartoum and Juba to restart stalled negotiations under a 2005 peace deal including on border security and currency, the State Department said.
Lyman “will also press the parties for an immediate end to conflict and unfettered humanitarian access in the Southern Kordofan region of Sudan,” the State Department said in a statement.
Fighting has raged in the ethnically divided border state since early June. UN peacekeepers started leaving when South Sudan became independent on July 9 as their mandate under the 2005 agreement expired.
The Khartoum government has rejected US and UN appeals to allow a temporary extension of the peacekeepers’ mandate, saying that South Kordofan was now an internal matter.
Lyman will also visit Ethiopia in a show of support for the country’s deployment of troops to Abyei, another troubled area of Sudan. In Addis Ababa, Lyman will also speak with former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating on Sudan for the African Union.
It marks Lyman’s second trip this month to the three countries. During his last visit, he was part of the US delegation in Juba for celebrations of South Sudan’s independence.
The United States has put a high priority on diplomacy and aid for ethhnically African South Sudan, which broke away from the Arab-dominated north after a two-decade civil war that claimed two million lives. A separate conflict erupted in 2003 in the western region of Darfur.
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