Cairo, November 01: Sudan criticised the renewal of US economic sanctions on Khartoum on Sunday, saying the move ran counter to Washington’s efforts to mediate between north Sudan and the country’s semi-autonomous south.
“America claims it works as a mediator and is playing a positive role in solving Sudan’s problems, and at the same time it renews its sanctions against us,” Mustafa Ismail, an advisor to President Omar al-Beshir, told reporters in Cairo.
US President Barack Obama renewed the sanctions on Tuesday, a week after unveiling a new policy of pressure and incentives toward the Khartoum government.
The sanctions restrict US trade with and investment in Sudan, freeze Sudanese government assets in the United States, and ban transactions with individuals and entities linked to the conflict in Darfur.
The US’s new strategy involves engagement with Khartoum government officials, although the outreach will not include Beshir, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on alleged war crimes in Darfur.
On Saturday, US special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration met southern leader Salva Kiir as part of ongoing talks to hammer out key issues ahead of elections due in April and a 2011 referendum on south Sudanese independence.
Enthusiastic Sudanese began on Sunday to register for Sudan’s first presidential, legislative and regional elections in 24 years, with the authorities facing a tough logistical challenge.
Due to be held in April, the ballot comes at a crucial time for Sudan.
“Voter registration has started across Sudan,” the head of the elections commission, Al-Hadi Mohammed Ahmed, said.
Sudanese voters have a month to register for the polls and the authorities have set up both fixed and mobile registration centres across Africa’s largest country.
“We have set up a calendar (to reach remote areas) and village (tribal) chiefs are aware,” of the registration, said Ahmed.
Aly Verjee, of the US non-governmental Carter Centre which monitors elections, said: “It is a challenge to register 20 million people in one month … In Darfur there is a combination of security and logistical issues.”
Few people were out Sunday on the streets of Khartoum and in Juba, the capital of the semi-autonomous south, but in both cities residents said they planned to register for the April 2010 election.
“We are happy because this is the start of the elections,” said 25-year-old William Deng, who drives a motorbike taxi.
“I will go register in the week because today is the day of rest,” said Mary Lago, a secretary on her way to Sunday mass.
Khartoum housewife Musaid Yussef carried her baby to a registration office in a working-class district. “I am Sudanese and I want to exercise my right to vote,” she said.
Ali Abdel Galil Omar said he was given a “plastic, numbered voter registration card,” which he was told to submit in April when he casts his ballot.
The general elections will be the first in Sudan since 1986, three years before President Omar al-Beshir toppled a democratically elected government in a bloodless military coup, and the fifth since independence in 1956.
Beshir has pledged free and fair elections.
But former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who now share a unity government with Beshir’s National Congress Party (NCP), and other opposition parties have threatened a boycott.
The factions are demanding an “amendment of all laws related to freedoms and democratic transformation” by November 30 to bring them into line with Sudan’s interim constitution.
Meanwhile, southern Sudanese president Salva Kiir on Satuday backed independence for the semi-autonomous region in its upcoming referendum, warning that unity would make southerners “second class” citizens.
“You want to vote for unity so that you will become a second class in your own country, that is your choice,” said Kiir, speaking at Saint Teresa’s Catholic Cathedral in the southern capital Juba at the end of a service.
—Agencies