Washington, DC — Secretary of State Colin Powell will arrive in Kenya Tuesday to push for conclusion of peace talks on the Sudan underway in the Kenyan town of Naivasha. Powell will make the stopover on route from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bangkok, Thailand before traveling to Madrid for a donors conference on Iraq.
The purpose of the Kenya trip is to "engage with the Sudanese parties," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement, adding that peace in Sudan "is an important administration goal." Opening the current round of talks between the Sudan government and southern Sudanese rebels last week, Kenyan Foreign Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka gave the first hint of Powell's attendance by saying that he expected the Secretary to come "to encourage both parties or to witness the signing of the agreement."
Boucher said that Powell would also hold meetings with top Kenyan government officials to follow up on President Mwai Kibaki's state visit to Washington earlier this month. Kibaki pressed President Bush and his administration for a lifting of the U.S. travel advisories that have helped discourage tourists from visiting the country, which has been hard hit by a major downturn in the travel business since the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998 and additional attacks last year.
Optimism about the Sudan negotiations has been the rule in recent weeks. Sudanese rebels and Sudanese government officials are reporting progress in talks aimed at ending the two-decades old conflict that has claimed two million lives.
A senior administration official recently briefing reporters predicted a final settlement within a few months. "We're 80 percent there," the administration official said. Washington would "consider" removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if a deal was reached, the administration official also said.
In Washington two weeks ago, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail predicted that the rebels and his government would sign a peace accord by the end of the year. Observers have noted that Sudanese media have stopped referring to the SPLM/A's John Garang as a "rebel leader" and started referring to him with a title such as "Chairman of the SPLM/A".
The breakthrough in the talks came with the September 25 agreement on security arrangements during a six-year interim period, described by the senior administration official as the "single toughest issue." Under the agreed-upon arrangement, the SPLM/A will retain their forces in the South and the government has agreed to pull back some of its forces. Government and rebel forces will be gradually integrated in Khartoum and other areas during the transition.
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The deal means "that all we have left is the final signing of the agreement, which would be at any time before the end of this year," Mustafa told reporters at a Washington news conference during his brief visit to the U.S. capital.
Administration officials are downplaying the prospect of any signing while Powell is there, noting the difficult issues of wealth and power sharing that are not likely to be settled over the next few days. And Friday, Malik Agar Eyre, SPLM/A commander and Governor of Southern Blue Nile region, said talks had "hit a rock" over the three "disputed areas" of Southern Blue Nile, Abyei and the Nuba mountains.
Although administration officials are not saying whether the parties have reached or are near agreement on these issues, an administration official earlier this month said Powell would not go to Sudan unless a peace deal was near.
