US President George W. Bush's special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, resigned and was replaced by a former US diplomat to the UN amid questions about the administration's policies toward the vast African country.
Also on Friday, the US State Department's top diplomat for refugee crises announced her imminent departure. Ellen Sauerbrey, the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, who has been criticized for the handling of Iraqi refugee admissions, said she would be leaving the post soon.
By law, Sauerbrey, a former Republican politician whom Bush named as a "recess appointment," bypassing a tough fight for Senate confirmation, cannot stay in the position after Congress returns in the middle of next month from its holiday break unless she is renominated and confirmed.
"It has been a great privilege," she said in a farewell e-mail.
Natsios, the Sudan envoy, had overseen a push to end the violence that the US calls genocide in Sudan's troubled Darfur region and worked to maintain a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.
The White House announced that Natsios, a former administrator of the US Agency for International Development, would step down after just over a year on the job, during which officials said he was frequently frustrated by internal bureaucratic battles in Washington over the direction of the policy.
"The president is grateful for Andrew's service to the administration and for his dedication to the cause of peace in Sudan," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.
Natsios, who plans to return to academia, will be replaced by Richard Williamson, an attorney, former ambassador and senior Republican party official, who is close to US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, the statement said.
"The United States continues to lead international efforts to deploy a large and effective peacekeeping force to Darfur, and implement the north-south peace agreement, while providing for the humanitarian needs of conflict-affected populations across Sudan," it said.
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