Special to The Hoya Friday, September 22, 2006

During his address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Bush named visiting professor Andrew Natsios (CAS ’71) special envoy to Sudan in an effort to facilitate the international response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Natsios, who resigned as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Jan. 12 to teach at Georgetown, said that he will not be leaving his teaching post despite his new responsibilities. “Special envoys generally are part-time jobs, though I expect because of the crisis right now I will be devoting extra time to the diplomacy until we can stabilize the situation,” he said. He added that the State Department will provide him with a full-time staff. Natsios said that two other Georgetown faculty members, School of Foreign Service Dean Robert Galluci and professor Anthony Lake, a former national security advisor, served as special envoys while on faculty. Natsios said he hopes to restore the credibility of the international community in his new role. “The international community needs to speak with a unified voice on what needs to be done to resolve the crisis, and right now it is not doing that,” he said. Estimates suggest that over 400,000 people have died and millions have been displaced since violence broke out in Darfur in 2003. In ay the main rebel group signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government, but violence persists. Recently, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the body’s peacekeeping forces in Darfur. Sudan, however, has said that it will accept only forces from the African Union. “The U.S. position remains that we need a much larger U.N. force in Darfur, which the Sudanese government is now stonewalling,” Natsios said. Maheen Kaleem (SFS ’07), a member of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, a group started at Georgetown that kicked off a national wave of activism on college campuses, approved of the appointment. “There are few individuals who understand the situation in Darfur as well as Andrew Natsios,” she said. “His knowledge as well his no-nonsense approach will be extremely useful in helping to bring all parties involved in the ongoing conflict to the table.” Approximately 30 STAND members participated in a rally last weekend calling for greater U.S. intervention in Darfur. “Perhaps our most tangible success is Bush’s recent statement at the U.N. The rhetoric used in his speech is almost word-for-word what our demands were,” Kaleem said.