The US special envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, has given Sudanese parties - which are locked in an 18-year civil war - a mere two months to show interest in peace "expressed in actions" before ending his mission, AFP reported.
He said in Cairo after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that the United States would not spend "month after month" trying to end Sudan's decades of civil war, and would drop its bid if the warring parties acted against peace.
The US has expressed keen interest in Sudan's civil war, especially since the discovery of huge oil reserves in the battered African country. This interest was most clearly expressed by budget allocations of millions of dollars in aid to the Christian and animist rebels fighting the Islamist government in the north.
The former senator was quoted by AFP as saying that the United States was not ready to engage in month after month, year after year of fruitless negotiations.
"If they indicate by their actions they're not really interested in peace, then my agreement with the president is I will simply report back to him that this... is not something that is fruitful," said Danforth, who is currently still in Egypt.
Danforth, who met both Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and opposition leader John Garang, has acknowledged that decades of distrust between Sudanese governments and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), would make it difficult to bring peace to the country.
On Saturday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met with Sudanese National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leader Mohammed Othman Al Merghani.
The meeting came as part of Egypt’ contacts with the various Sudanese camps within the framework of the Egyptian-Libyan initiative to end their civil war – Albawaba.com
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