Having overcome months of inattention and internal disagreements, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team is making a strong, unified and, its members predict, ultimately successful push for the peaceful breakup of Sudan.

A sharp turnaround in Washington’s handling of the secession issue began to occur about six months ago.

Until then, high-level US officials had failed to develop a coherent, effective policy on Sudan, and activists were warning that the Obama administration risked undoing the Bush administration’s achievements in brokering an end to the 20-year civil war between the central government based in Khartoum and the oil-rich South.

Scott Gration, Obama’s special emissary to Sudan, openly disagreed with the American UN ambassador Susan Rice, on how to deal with the regime of President Omar al Bashir.

Mr Gration favoured a pragmatic approach to a head of state indicted for war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region.

He urged that priority be placed on persuading Bashir to accede to the South’s secession and that the US simultaneously downplay the Khartoum government’s violence in Darfur.

Ms Rice, who was reported to be “furious” with this stance, argued that the US should slap additional sanctions on Khartoum.

Long listed by the United States as “a state sponsor of terrorism,” Sudan has been hit with a variety of financial punishments as part of a US effort to isolate and discredit the government.

The drift and the rifts within the Obama team came to an end in August when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sided with Mr Gration.

Demanding that there be “one team, one fight,” Ms Clinton recommended to President Obama that the US intensify its diplomacy toward Sudan with the aim of helping engineer a peaceful secession referendum.

Bashir was then promised a phase-out of US sanctions as well as assistance from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in exchange for his acceptance of South Sudan’s independence.

Obama also ordered much more active and direct diplomatic involvement in both Khartoum and in the South’s capital, Juba.

Princeton Lyman, a former ambassador to South Africa, was appointed to reinforce ambassador Gration’s work, while Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate, became another de facto special envoy to Sudan.

Overall, the United States has increased its diplomatic presence in Sudan and neighbouring countries fourfold in the past six months.

Even as President Bashir was being constantly cajoled and courted, Southern Sudanese leaders were being encouraged to adopt a non-belligerent attitude toward Khartoum and to make compromises on mechanical aspects of carrying out the referendum.

On its part, the Obama team promised to provide nation-building assistance in the aftermath of the referendum.

As a result of this diplomatic offensive, US officials are expressing confidence that the January 9-15 voting will proceed peacefully.

“The United States has invested a great deal of diplomacy to ensure the outcome of this referendum is successful and peaceful,” Johnnie Carson, the State Department’s top Africa official, told reporters on January 5.

Team Obama is also cautiously optimistic that Khartoum will accept the outcome and play a constructive role in the ensuing negotiations on critical issues such as demarcation of borders, division of oil revenues and the status of the disputed territory of Abyei.

But activists are warning that the hardest part of the process will begin after the referendum votes are tabulated.