As South Sudan prepares for a referendum on independence, Scott Gration, the US Special Envoy to Sudan, spoke to Al Jazeera about recently concluded ceasefire negotiations and the outlook for the troubled country.<br /><br />He asserted that while a ceasefire was not agreed to, "nothing went wrong" in the talks, and that a ceasefire remains critical to ending the bloodshed. The US position, he said, remained that the ceasefire must precede a framework that addreses the "underlying root causes" of the conflict in Darfur.
