Author: Colin Thomas-Jensen and Maggie Fick

The top agenda items for today's White House meeting between President Obama and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are not a surprise; Middle East peace and combating extremism are the shared preoccupations that define U.S.-Egyptian relations. Yet a less obvious but no less urgent national security concern for Egypt is the situation Sudan. President Mubarak shares President Obama's stated goal of lasting peace and stability in Sudan, and President Obama must seize this opportunity to leverage the United States' close relationship with Egypt into a genuine partnership to achieve this mutually desirable outcome. Egypt's stakes in Sudan are extraordinarily high for ...

Reactions to today’s ruling on the status of Sudan’s disputed Abyei region will serve as a barometer of each side’s willingness to take concrete steps toward peace and tell us a lot about the future of that beleaguered country. The initial signs are positive, but much remains to be done. An oil-rich territory astride Sudan’s contested North-South border, Abyei was a major flashpoint in the bloody civil war between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the South and one of the thorniest issues at the negotiations that led to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ...