setting up Barack with backing another regional horse before the 2009 elections
snip
The United States has tense relations with the Islamist government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who came to power in Africa's largest country in a 1989 coup.Kiir was the leader of rebels who fought for greater autonomy for Sudan's mostly animist or Christian south from the Muslim north in a civil war that claimed 2 million lives.
He became first vice president in the Khartoum government after Bashir and the rebels made peace. Officials have said he plans to run for president in elections due in 2009.
The U.S. State Department has designated the Khartoum government as a "state sponsor of terrorism" since 1993.Bush has called killings in Darfur, a western region of Sudan, a genocide and denounced Bashir's government for its policies there.
Foreign experts say some 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in nearly six years of fighting between rebels and the army and government-backed militias.Bush and Kiir will also discuss Darfur, Johndroe said.The deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur has lagged behind schedule.
snip
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N31379683.htm Maybe the Lebanese will donate some of its
new Russian jets to "south" Sudan .
A balance of power countermeasure.
And where does China sit with this story? It is their oil spigot being meddled with.
:sarcasm: