WASHINGTON: Long-time US supporters of self-determination for the mainly African population of the southern Sudan are increasingly sceptical of US efforts to end the country’s civil war, particularly in light of this week’s decision by the European Union (EU) to resume aid to the largely Arab National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Khartoum.

Resumption of the aid, suspended since 1990 over human rights concerns, will add to Khartoum’s treasury and its international legitimacy just as a joint US-European mediation effort to end the war between the government and the rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) gathers momentum, critics say.

In their view, the announcement - coming on the heels of Sudan’s rejection of a US request to stop bombing targets in the South as a key test of the government’s commitment to the peace process - suggests either that the EU feels it can defy Washington or that the US administration’s past harsh rhetoric against Khartoum no longer reflects policy.

“Unless they think Washington’s policy has quietly changed in light of Sept 11, the resumption of aid is really a thumb in the eye of the United States, a truly spectacularly offensive gesture,” said Eric Reeves, a leading Sudan activist.

Reeves added that activist groups ranging from evangelical Christian churches on the right to the Congressional Black Caucus on the left were only now realising the degree to which the administration of President George W. Bush may have surrendered its Sudan policy to the Europeans. “There’s some real anger out there on this,” he said.

“This (European) announcement was very badly timed,” said John Prendergast, a Sudan expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG) who advised former President Bill Clinton on his National Security Council staff. “It certainly reduces the political leverage the international community has in supporting the peace process.”

“The decision to resume aid shows a complete hypocrisy and racism,” said Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, a grassroots lobby group. “The EU is about to slap sanctions on (Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe over legitimate concerns about free and fair elections, while lifting sanctions on an extremist minority regime that’s bombing its own population.”

Activists are alarmed by that attitude. They believe the US is selling out the South’s basic demand for self- determination, explicitly recognised in the Declaration of Principles (DOP) agreed to by both parties in 1997 as part of an African-led peace process.

Any peace process which does not include self-determination for the South - whether it takes the form of real autonomy or a referendum on secession as called for in the DOP - is certain to fail, said ICG’s Prendergast, who this week published a study calling for the international community to rally behind the DOP as the core of any sustainable peace process.

“That’s the problem with Danforth’s confidence-building measures,” says one Congressional aide who was recently briefed by Danforth’s chief staff aide, retired Ambassador Robert Oakley.

“They’re not linked to self-determination for the South. It just shows that the administration’s priority is to end the fighting, rather than to negotiate a political settlement that can last. “In that respect, it looks as if the Europeans have brought us much closer to their position of engagement with Sudan than the administration has brought them to ours,” he added —Dawn/InterPress Service.