Editorial: Plotting a new course

President Obama's new, more conciliatory position on Sudan has some people scratching their heads. But as he is doing with Afghanistan, Obama is showing he won't be blindly wedded to a policy that may have been overtaken by events.

Obama is taking a general's advice on this front - retired Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, special envoy to Sudan, who is urging a Teddy Roosevelt approach: Speak softly, but carry a big stick. So, all of Obama's past shouting about standing up to Sudan President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir has been reduced to a whisper - for now.

Obama recognizes that changes have occurred in Sudan since Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court earlier this year for alleged war crimes, and since 2004, when President George W. Bush called the deadly results of Bashir's policies in the Darfur region "genocide."

While the situation has improved in Darfur, in western Sudan, violence in southern Sudan has killed more than 1,200 people this year. As Gration advises, Sudan's prognosis won't improve until its decades-long civil war between its north and south is over.

That won't happen without Bashir's carrying out all of the terms of a 2005 peace agreement with rebels in the south. Gration says that's why the United States must work with Bashir, instead of isolating him. Gration told the New York Times, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you have to go with someone." That someone is Bashir.

The peace agreement has granted a degree of autonomy to the rebels in the south, and calls for a national election next year and a referendum on the south's possible secession in 2011. Obama will focus on the election goals.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the new Sudan policy includes both rewards for the Bashir government when it does right and punishment when it does wrong. But she wouldn't specify what actions might be taken in either case.

Administration officials also said they wouldn't deal directly with Bashir, given the war-crime charges. They will instead work with Bashir's senior advisers. One wonders, though, why the administration is going through that farce if the result is the same. Bashir will direct his advisers.

Obama's new posture has upset some world human-rights groups that for years have tried to bring some relief to the war victims in Darfur. They call it hypocrisy for the United States to parley with the same government that it had accused of genocide.

The Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition wasn't that harsh. It said it "welcomed" Obama's new policy, but stressed that it won't work unless he is personally involved in carrying it out.

"Incentives should not be provided before there is concrete and lasting progress on resolving Sudan's interlocking crises, opening political space for Sudanese to determine their future, and protecting human rights," said coalition president Jerry Fowler.

Obama appears to be on the right course in trying to address the overarching political situation in Sudan. But, as the Save Darfur Coalition warns, for the new policy to work, Obama must not let Sudan slip from his focus amid concerns about Afghanistan, for example, and Iraq, and Iran.

That's not to mention huge domestic issues such as health-care reform and the recession.