President Barack Obama said Monday that the US will shift its policy toward Sudan to one based on working with the Khartoum government instead of isolating it. Still, Obama said he later this week will renew tough sanctions against the Sudanese government. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was announcing details of the new approach at a news conference Monday, joined by UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Scott Gration, the administration's envoy to Sudan. In a statement Monday, Obama said the US and international community must act “with a sense of urgency and purpose” to seek and end to conflict, human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur. He said an agreement between the North and South in Sudan must be implemented for there to be any chance for long-term peace. “These two goals must both be pursued simultaneously with urgency,” Obama said. Rice and Gration have clashed over how far to engage the Sudanese government of President Omar Al-Bashir. Gration has argued in public for a less strict line toward Bashir, who he has told officials is the key to resolving the situation in Darfur as well as in southern Sudan, which in 2005 signed a provisional peace deal with the government.
