Sudan says new US policy has "positive points"

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The Khartoum government said on Monday that U.S. President Barack Obama's new policy on Sudan had positive points and was a strategy of engagement, not isolation.

Unveiling the policy on Monday, Obama called for a "definitive end" to the conflict in the western Darfur region and implementation of a peace deal that ended more than two decades of a separate north-south civil war.

The strategy offers incentives if Khartoum works toward peace but Sudan faces tougher steps if it fails to act. Obama also said he would renew sanctions on Sudan this week.

Sudanese presidential adviser Ghazi Salahadin said the absence of the threat of military intervention in the strategy was important and represented "the new Obama spirit."

"This is a strategy of engagement. It is not a strategy of isolation," he told a news conference in Khartoum. "Compared to the previous policies, there are positive points."

Sudan's former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) urged Obama not to go soft on Khartoum.

"There were reasons for which those sanctions were placed on Khartoum and those situations have not changed," said Anne Itto, a senior SPLM official.

The SPLM accuse the north of stalling on a democratic transformation outlined in the north-south peace deal, a necessity for Sudan to hold free elections due in April 2010.