Khartoum optimistic about Obama

KHARTOUM - Sudan is optimistic about relations with US President Barack Obama but has bad memories of the administration of ex-president Bill Clinton, whose wife Hillary is the new US secretary of state.

"We are hopeful, we are optimistic," foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq said on Thursday. "We will listen to them if they have anything to say to us."

"If there is the will, there could be a very good relationship with the next administration," Sadiq said, adding that it is "too early" to evaluate any change in US-Sudan relations.

Sudan and the United States do not enjoy full diplomatic relations and ties are largely strained on a number of issues, including the nearly six-year conflict in Darfur where Washington has accused Khartoum of genocide.

From 1993 to 2001, Bill Clinton ordered sanctions against Sudan as a state “sponsor of terror” and launched an air strike on what he said was a chemical weapons plant in Khartoum in 1998. Sudan says the plant was a medicine factory.

"During the Clinton administration, they were no direct talks between Sudan and the USA... they imposed bilateral sanctions, bombarded us and put us on the (terror) blacklist."

Relations under Obama's predecessor George W. Bush were marked by accusations that Sudan was carrying out genocide in Darfur.

The Bush administration started and then suspended talks to improve its difficult relations with the Khartoum government, branding the country uninterested in peace.

"We established some sort of consultation, talks, between the two countries with the objectives of some normalization," said Sadiq. "It was very little, but a step forward."

The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum. Since then, the conflict has disintegrated into a maze of fraying rebel groups, banditry, tribal conflict and flip-flopping militias.

The United Nations has said 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced. Khartoum puts the number of dead at 10,000.

Many of the rebels enjoy direct and indirect foreign support that helped fuel the conflict, with some critics pointing the finger at France, which has a military presence in neighbouring Chad – also accused of arming the Sudanese rebels. France had been accused of involvement in the genocide in Rwanda, but Paris denied responsibility, conceding only that ‘political’ errors were made.