Sudan lifts media censorship but editors cautious

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's president ordered an end to state censorship of media on Sunday, officials said, a move that will be seen as an important step towards the country's first multi-party elections in more than 20 years.

Editors gave the announcement a cautious welcome, but some said they would still face pressure over sensitive stories.

"We had a meeting with President al-Bashir. He ordered a stop to censorship from today," the chairman of Sudan's national press council, the state regulator, Ali Shomo told Reuters.

Journalists have complained of regular censorship in recent years, saying security officers have made nightly visits to their offices to check and sometimes remove articles ahead of publication, despite constitutional guarantees of a free media.

Editors say print-runs have been seized and titles shut down, particularly when writers tried to tackle controversial subjects like the Darfur conflict and the International Criminal Court's war crimes case against president Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Sunday's announcement came two weeks after newspaper editors said they sat down with officers from Sudan's national security service to sign a code of journalistic conduct, seen as a precursor to the lifting of censorship.

A copy of the document, seen by Reuters, included broad promises for newspapers to be fair in their reporting, to respect religious and racial differences and to obey the law.

"It is a very important move," said the editor of independently-owned Al-Khartoum newspaper Fadlallah Mohamed.

"Censorship is contrary to free press in Sudan. We are expecting the general election. It is very important to have a free press in such circumstances."