U.S. Offers Sudan An Easy Way Off The Terror List

From Creeping Sharia:

U.S. offers Sudan easy way off terror list


Posted on November 8, 2010 by creeping

An update on this post, via U.S. offers Sudan quicker route off terror list – Yahoo! News.



WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will drop Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as July 2011 if Khartoum ensures two key referendums take place on schedule in January and the results are respected, senior U.S. officials said Sunday.



President Barack Obama made the offer through Senator John Kerry, who recently told Sudan’s leaders the United States was ready to “decouple” the issue of Darfur from Khartoum’s terror designation to win cooperation on the January polls, the officials said.



“We like to consider this a pay-for-performance operation,” one official said.



Sudan’s two parallel referendums on January 9 could see southern Sudan secede to become Africa’s newest state and decide whether the disputed oil-rich territory of Abyei joins the north or the south.



The U.S. State Department added Sudan to its state terror list in 1993, accusing Khartoum of harboring local and international militants including for a time al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.



Sudan is one of four countries on the list along with Cuba, Iran and Syria. The designation carries sanctions on U.S. foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales and a raft of restrictions on financial and other dealings.



Officials say Khartoum has been pushing hard for the United States to remove it from the list, as Washington did in prior years with both North Korea and Libya.



Obama’s offer moves up by at least six months the date by which Khartoum might come off the list. But the U.S. officials emphasized a final decision would still be contingent on Sudan halting all sponsorship of terrorism for at least six months before the July 2011 target date and pledging not to resume such assistance in the future.



Obama and Kerry working hard to take Sudan off a list of terrorist states. Why? For what? For harboring a war criminal? For forcing the predominantly Christian south to have to secede from the Muslim north to try and live in peace?



You don’t have to be the Amazing Kreskin to know how this might play out. Hudna? Sudan takes the offer, allows the vote, plays nice just long enough to get off the list, resumes jihad – and doesn’t have to worry about some pesky U.S. list of terror states