Dear Mr. McDonough,

Thank you for your continued leadership to bring peace to all of Sudan.

We support bold U.S. moves in support of peace. But we want to ensure that U.S. incentives are tied closely to verifiable and significant progress on the the North/South issues as well as on the ground in Darfur. It will be crucial to use U.S. incentives as a means of sequencing progress on specific issues, including holding and respecting the results of the referenda in the South and Abyei, coming to agreement on the post-referenda issues between the North and South, ceasing aerial bombing in Darfur, allowing full access for humanitarian aid and peacekeepers in Darfur, and concluding a comprehensive Darfur peace agreement with the major rebel factions and other groups that ensures the peaceful right of return of the three million people displaced by the Darfur genocide.

But just as the Obama administration needs to have a set of meaningful incentives on the table in response to peace in the South and Darfur, the U.S. must have an equally robust set of consequences prepared in case one of the parties plunges the country back to war.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,