allAfrica.com: Africa: Interview With Chester A. Crocker (Part 1): Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (Page 1 of 3)

Africa: Interview With Chester A. Crocker (Part 1): Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia

Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester A. Crocker, who served during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, held the post for eight years - longer than anyone in that position before or since. He is now a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. The Bush Administration had asked professor Crocker to become a Special Envoy to Sudan for the U.S. government. Last week, Crocker turned down the task citing "personal reasons". But speaking with allAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr., Professor Crocker also expressed doubt whether the warring parties in Sudan are ready to work out a peaceful settlement to the 18-year-old conflict. He was also skeptical about the solidity of the bi-partisan coalition that has formed on Sudan in Washington. In this first part of an interview that will be continued Monday, Professor Crocker also offers comments on the conflicts in Congo and Sierra Leone.

Why didn't you take the position of special envoy to Sudan?

A mix of factors was in my decision - mostly personal factors. I have full time employment and a lot of commitments as it is and this might have been a situation where I might have had to drop certain things to do this and I didn't see this as a long-term assignment so that raised some questions for me in personal terms.

A second factor is that I am not personally persuaded that the situation in Sudan proper and around Sudan is all that prospective for a substantive peace process. There's been a lot of play-acting, a lot of pretence, a lot of posturing about peace and a lot of meetings and there are several peace processes already out there but they don't have traction; they are not serious and I'm not personally persuaded that the situation is all that ripe for getting such a peace process going at this moment. That's my analysis of the parties and that's where I come out.

And a third factor is that I think that the situation inside the beltway here in Washington is not a strong basis for the conduct of a serious engagement in a peace process. It's a rather strange alliance - let's put it that way - and I'm not sure it's a very solid basis for an American lead role. So I had some misgivings about that and that's the mix of factors that were in my mind.

There was specific opposition to you coming from the left and the right. The evangelical right, an important part of the Bush administration constituency, feeling that you weren't "right" enough and the left still feeling hostile because of "constructive engagement" when you were assistant secretary of state for African Affairs and your association with that policy toward South Africa.

I really can't speak to what the opposition might have been. If it was stronger it might have persuaded me to take the job. I'm a stubborn sort of person and there were times during the 1980s when I was assistant secretary where people would say, 'Why do you stay there; it's not exactly an easy road you're on?' and I would say to myself if there weren't so many people pushing me to leave, I might have. No, this wasn't a factor in my thinking because I was asked to do this. I don't work for 500 people. I would be working for the Secretary of State and the President if I had said yes.

Some would say that the kind of bi-partisan coalition we have "inside the beltway" as you described it earlier is so unusual when it comes to African issues in particular that it would be a good sign as to the prospects of an effective American role and working toward some kind of peace settlement.

History will decide of course. My own reading is that this bi-partisan coalition that you refer to is on one side of the issue and implies that we already know who the good guys and who the bad guys are and it's just a question of finding a way to impose our view of their situation on them. Well, that's not the way the world is organized; we don't have that capacity. There are certain realities and I think that we have to recognize that there is more than one voice for the south; there's more than one voice for the north in Sudan. Getting the government in Sudan to be seriously tested - which has been hard to do - is going to require that one be able to put ideas in front of them which would clarify the uncertainties in their own ranks. It's not all that clear how unified the Khartoum government is. Nor is it that clear the extent to which one voice speaks for the south or that voice in fact is looking to answer some of the uncertain questions that have been hanging around for some years now about which way to go on the peace process. So, I think for those reasons I'm a little bit skeptical.

But when it comes to the situation in Washington it's going to be a difficult road to walk for any envoy on this - to decide how much of what we do is basically to keep interest groups happy on a domestic political basis and how much of what we do is based on the foreign policy merits. That's a tough line to walk. And we'll have to see how it plays out. It puts any envoy in a particularly exposed position in light of the other point I'm making about Sudan itself.

Do you think the administration itself has made up its mind about where it wants to go in Sudan? My sense is that there are two conflicting directions, one lodged in the White House and the other in the Department of State when it comes to Sudan.

I think that there's a fair degree of coherence at the top levels on this. Naturally it is the State Department's job to try and make the foreign policy work and it's the White House staff's job to try and make the domestic policy work. So you're bound to have that tension; that's built into the situation on most any issue, not just on Sudan. But I think, insofar as I've been able to figure out, that secretary Powell and the President are on the same page when it comes to trying to find a way to get peace. Without peace you don't get anything. We can give all the sermons we like standing back here about the need to stop this and that, wind up all these hideous abuses that are going on in Sudan, but sermons are not going to bring about peace. And without peace you don't get to a different future with a different constitution and respect for human rights and the rights of everybody - a different Sudan. You can't get there without peace.

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