Obama urges Sudan leaders to take steps toward peace

UNITED NATIONS - President Barack Obama urged the leaders of Sudan to "make the right choice," to continue implementing the provisions of a peace agreement that ended a civil war that he said has claimed 2 million lives and left millions displaced and homeless.

"At this moment, the fate of millions of people hangs in the balance," he said at a high-level meeting at the United Nations General Assembly on the war-torn country, the largest nation in Africa. "What happens in Sudan in the days ahead may decide whether a people who have endured too much war move forward toward peace or slip backward into bloodshed. And what happens in Sudan matters to all of sub-Saharan Africa, and it matters to the world."

Obama joined U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice as well as more than a dozen heads of state and government, at what all described as a critical meeting, held on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting.

Moderated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the meeting was also attended by leaders on both sides of the conflict in Sudan, Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, of the government of Sudan, and Salva Kiir, who under the comprehensive peace agreement is first vice president of Sudan and president of the government of Southern Sudan.

The referendum will allow people in the southern part of the country, home to a mainly Christian population, to decide whether they want to secede from the mainly Islamic government in the capital, Khartoum, the northern part of the country.

Those problems are complicated by the massive humanitarian crisis in the western part of the country, Darfur, a region where, UN and U.S. officials said, a Khartoum-friendly militia has attacked residents, resulting in a crisis that former President George W. Bush called a genocide.

The UN has two peacekeeping missions in Sudan.

"The comprehensive peace agreement that ended the civil war must be implemented," Obama said, referring to the 2005 framework that created a fragile peace after two decades of war.

He worried that inadequate preparations have been made for the upcoming referendum, scheduled for Jan. 9., and that a delay or other logistical or political complications could sink the country into more bloodshed.

"We are here because the leaders of Sudan face a choice," he said. "It's not the choice of how to move forward to give the people of Sudan the peace they deserve . . . The choice is for Sudanese leaders - whether they will have the courage to walk the path. And the decision cannot be delayed any longer."