CAIRO - Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and Chief of the Intelligence Service Omar Suleiman will start a visit to the US Tuesday for talks with US officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton focusing on Sudan, the Middle East peace process, Iraq, Lebanon and bilateral ties. "The Egyptian-US talks will tackle four main issues: Sudanese referendum, the Palestinian-Israeli talks, Iraq and Lebanon," Abul Gheit told reporters in Cairo Monday. He added that Egypt would discuss with the US means to hold a “transparent” referendum in Sudan with all the measures agreed upon between the Sudanese partners. "All necessary measures should be taken to ensure that the referendum would reflect the will of the people in southern Sudan," Abul Gheit added. Sudan's border region of Abyei is bracing for conflict as a deadlock over the referendum, scheduled for January 9, to decide the area's status is straining a US-brokered peace agreement in 2005 that ended Africa's longest-running civil war. "The referendum should be conducted in a way that will not deceive the southerners or incite violence due to doubts over its fairness," the Egyptian official said. Abyei's residents are scheduled to decide in the vote whether to join Sudan's north or south. The ballot is now in jeopardy, with President Omar al-Bashir's government in Khartoum, the capital, and the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the south, being unable to agree on who can vote. US President Barack Obama has put forward proposals for negotiations between the government and the SPLM, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry told reporters in Khartoum on Sunday. “We do have thoughts in terms of Abyei,” Kerry said. “President Obama has offered a roadmap for how to move forward and we have offered some new thoughts on how to resolve Abyei.” Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, told the Sudanese government that the US was willing to accelerate the removal of Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as soon as July 2011, if the peace agreement is fully implemented, a State Department official said Monday. Abul Gheit added that the stalled talks between Israel and the Palestinians would be discussed during his Washington's visit after Suleiman, the Chief of the Egyptian Intelligence Service, held talks with Israeli leaders last week over unblocking peacemaking.
