CAIRO: Outcast Sudan is inching its way back to the international fold, winning hard-won praise from Washington for efforts to leave “terrorism” behind.

But by remaining on a US terrorism blacklist for the eighth consecutive year, the country which once sheltered Osama bin Laden has still failed to discard its pariah mantle, and will have to work hard to prove it has changed for good.

In its annual report on terrorism, the US State Department on Tuesday kept Sudan on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, but it said Sudan and Libya came closest to demands for cooperation after the September 11 attacks and were on the right track to leaving terror behind.

Sudan has made no official comment on the report yet.

Analysts and diplomats say the West, including the United States, is keen to bring Sudan in from the cold, swapping engagement for isolation to ensure it will not become a new launchpad for violence like Afghanistan.

Some say Sudan’s nascent oil sector, currently off limits to US firms due to unilateral sanctions, is an extra incentive.

Most say Khartoum is also eager to shed its rogue status, reap the benefits of economic rapprochement and avoid a repeat of a 1998 US bombing for its suspected terrorist intentions. Sudan has long rejected the charge that it supports terrorism.

But Khartoum will have to pay to play, keeping up its cooperation on terrorism, holding its doors shut to suspected outlaws, and heeding a US call to end a civil war at home.

—Reuters