Not much in the news on Darfur lately, probably because
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The level of violence has declined somewhat
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There's other stuff – economic meltdown, healthcare reform – in the news
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Bush is no longer president and no desire to beat up on Obama
The Obama administration is having an internal disagreement:
Obama aides clash over Sudan policy – Washington Times
The clash – one of the first to become public in the new administration – came into the open Thursday when the president's special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, told Congress that he did not think there was any evidence to support the continued designation of Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism.
The retired Air Force major general told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he has been having an "honest debate" with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, who served as coordinator for foreign policy in Mr. Obama's election campaign.
The Obama administration's Sudan policy, which Mr. Gration predicted would be rolled out "in the next few weeks," is to include an intricate mix of incentives and penalties.
Mr. Gration has taken a softer line than Ms. Rice toward the regime headed by Sudanese President Omar Bashir, going so far last month as to say that the genocide against the people of Darfur was over and that the world was now dealing with the remnants of the killings.
Ms. Rice has continued to call the situation in Darfur genocide, a label first applied to the situation there by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in 2004 at the height of a campaign against farmers in Darfur by Sudan-government backed fighters known as Janjaweed.
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Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, said that the level of killing in Darfur has declined, something Mr. Gration mentioned Thursday.
"What is different between now and 2005 is that there is not systematic destruction of villages because so many villages were destroyed and you've got 2.7 million people who still live in very dire circumstances," Mr. Fowler said.
Meanwhile, here's what's happening in the Congo –
Conflict Casts Long, Lethal Shadow in Eastern Congo – washingtonpost.com
By some estimates, at least 5 million Congolese have died in more than a decade of conflict touched off by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, which sent a flood of militiamen across the border into mineral-rich eastern Congo. Although the conflict has surged, receded and changed over time — at some points involving eight countries and at others breaking into smaller conflicts among a mess of armed groups — the cumulative death toll in eastern Congo is the largest since World War II.
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