Envoy to Sudan Asked to Lobby to End Civil War
The head of a federal commission on religious freedom overseas is urging the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan to help persuade the Sudanese government to peacefully end the country’s 18-year-old civil war.
In his letter to former Sen. John Danforth, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Chairman Michael K. Young suggested that Danforth persuade the Sudanese government and “all its allied militia” to agree to a “comprehensive and conditioned cease-fire” with opposition groups in the southern half of the country.
More than 2 million Sudanese have died in fighting and war-related famine since 1983, when fighting erupted between the Arab Islamic government in the north and autonomy-seeking groups in the mainly animist and Christian south. Some 4 million people have fled their homes.
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