Obama aides clash over Sudan policy

A dispute over policy toward Sudan has exposed a significant rift between two of President Obama’s closest advisers.

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.

The conflict, which has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced 2.5 million more, has since become more complicated with anti-government fighters in Darfur splintering into several rebel groups.

Ms. Rice also has said that she supports the indictment of Gen. Bashir for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Mr. Gration did not mention the indictment in his testimony Thursday.

Asked about the dispute with Mr. Gration, an aide to Ms. Rice said Thursday that she “is not going to have anything to say about that.”

However, a senior administration official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing internal deliberations, acknowledged the rift.

“I am very proud of the open and robust interagency process - on Sudan and many other issues - run by [National Security Adviser] General [James L.] Jones and [Deputy National Security Adviser] Tom Donilon,” he said. “Debate strengthens the policy. … The president views debate as a very good thing - and it is curious that after eight years of a lack of sufficiently robust debate on national security matters that anyone would wish it otherwise.”

Like Ms. Rice, Mr. Gration - who met Mr. Obama when he was a senator and visited Africa in 2006 - was in Mr. Obama’s inner circle of foreign-policy advisers during the presidential campaign.

“We have some pretty significant actors inside the administration who have very different views about whether robust engagement is backed principally by pressures or backed principally by incentives,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough project, an anti-genocide advocacy group affiliated with the Center for American Progress. The Washington think tank has helped staff the administration.

During the hearing Thursday, Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi Republican, asked Mr. Gration about his characterization in June that the genocide had ended in Sudan. Mr. Wicker said that both Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama have said the genocide persists.

Mr. Gration said Thursday that he considered the matter a “definitional issue.”

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