WASHINGTON—The United States' special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, has resigned and is expected to be replaced by an Illinois Republican and former U.N. official, a senior U.S. official and aid workers said on Friday.
Natsios' successor is expected to be Richard Williamson, a former deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and leading Republican Party official from Chicago, said officials and nongovernmental organization sources.
Natsios was appointed to the post by President George W. Bush in September 2006 and has devoted much of his time to trying to resolve the crisis in Darfur, where the Bush administration says genocide has occurred.
"The announcement will be made today," said a senior Bush administration official, who asked not to be named, as the resignation and successor to Natsios was not yet widely known.
While doing the special envoy job, Natsios has also been teaching at Georgetown University in Washington and he told the president in his three-page resignation letter that he would like to return to that position full-time.
He had hoped to resign his post in June, but U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced Natsios, a former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to stay on until the end of the year, said the senior official.
Several U.S. officials said Natsios had been frustrated at the slow pace of getting in a 26,000-strong African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force into Darfur.
Sudan's government has been putting up obstacles preventing the force from getting into its vast western region. The United Nations has also had problems getting enough troops for the mission.
International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million driven from their homes in almost five years of revolt.
Natsios has also been trying to hold together a crumbling 2005 peace agreement between north and south Sudan and has made several visits to Sudan to deal with this issue and Darfur.
Williamson was deputy to former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, who is currently the Deputy Secretary of State.
Williamson, a Chicago lawyer, was also Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the Reagan administration.
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