U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to Sudan on Thursday said that there is no evidence to back up the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. Scott Gration told lawmakers at a Senate hearing that the U.S. sanctions linked to that designation hurt his and others' work to rebuild the war-torn African country's infrastructure and to help people suffering in camps. “It's a political decision,” Gration said of the terror designation. Gration recently said the situation in Darfur was no longer a “genocide,” but rather, they reflected the “remnants of genocide.” He did not back away from those comments Thursday, saying “there's significant difference between what happened in 2004 and 2003, which we characterized as a genocide, and what is happening today.” The level of violence in Darfur, Gration said, is not coordinated and is not as bad as in some other areas of the country, though he stressed that it “must end.” He called the disagreement with Rice an “honest debate” over a “definitional issue.” Sanctions, Gration said, affect the ability of aid workers to ship in heavy equipment to build roads and other crucial material. “At some point, we're going to have to unwind some of these sanctions so we can do the very things we need to do,” Gration said.
