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By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
April 2, 2011 (ADDIS ABABA) – The newly appointed US Special Envoy for Sudan, Ambassador Princeton Lyman, is expected to travel to Ethiopia on Saturday, for meetings between the ruling parties of North and South Sudan on the pending issues ahead of South Sudan’s transition to independence in July the US Department of State has said.
The trip comes shortly after the United States on Thursday announced the appointment of Ambassador Lyman as the new special envoy to Sudan, replacing Scott Gration.
Accepting the position, Lyman underlined that were 100 days to negotiate the tough issues that need to be resolved July 9, when the South is due to become fully independent.
He said that the Obama administration has worked hard to keep Sudan from falling back into north-south civil war. Two million died in the last North-South conflict, which lasted from 1983 until 2005.
In Ethiopia, Ambassador Lyman will participate in discussions between the parties to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) facilitated by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on security arrangements for the post-CPA period.
He will then travel to Khartoum, for meetings with senior Sudanese officials on both North-South issues and Darfur, where a separate conflict has been ongoing since 2003. After his visit to Sudan, Lyman will return to Ethiopia for discussions on future economic arrangements between Sudan’s North and South.
Ambassador Lyman agreed that the Abyei issue will be one of the tough issues to resolve, and promised to work with the African Union, the British, the Norwegians, and many others, to help the parties reach that agreement.
Speaking to reporters on March 31, the former envoy to both South Africa and Nigeria, expressed concerns on the disputed oil-rich region of Abyei which is still waiting for referendum on whether it wants to remain with the North or break away along with South.
He stressed a need to end the conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
’We’re also deeply concerned...about Darfur, about the continuing problems of violence there, the many, many, almost 2 million people who have been displaced and who are still living in camps,’ he said.
(ST)
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