   Photo

   United Nations peacekeepers at a refugee camp in Sudan on Monday. In
   exchange for the lifting of United States trade sanctions, Sudan has said
   it will improve access for aid groups, stop supporting rebels in
   neighboring South Sudan and cooperate with American intelligence agents.
   Credit Ashraf Shazly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

   LONDON — After nearly 20 years of hostile relations, the American
   government plans to reverse its position on Sudan and lift trade
   sanctions, Obama administration officials said late Thursday.

   Sudan is one of the poorest, most isolated and most violent countries in
   Africa, and for years the United States has imposed punitive measures
   against it in a largely unsuccessful attempt to get the Sudanese
   government to stop killing its own people.

   On Friday, the Obama administration will announce a new Sudan strategy.
   For the first time since the 1990s, the nation will be able to trade
   extensively with the United States, allowing it to buy goods like tractors
   and spare parts and attract much-needed investment in its collapsing
   economy.

   In return, Sudan will improve access for aid groups, stop supporting
   rebels in neighboring South Sudan, cease the bombing of insurgent
   territory and cooperate with American intelligence agents.

   American officials said Sudan had already shown important progress on a
   number of these fronts. But to make sure the progress continues, the
   executive order that President Obama plans to sign on Friday, days before
   leaving office, will have a six-month review period. If Sudan fails to
   live up to its commitments, the embargo can be reinstated.

   Analysts said good relations with Sudan could strengthen moderate voices
   within the country and give the Sudanese government incentives to refrain
   from the brutal tactics that have defined it for decades.

   In 1997, President Bill Clinton imposed a comprehensive trade embargo
   against Sudan and blocked the assets of the Sudanese government, which was
   suspected of sponsoring international terrorism. In the mid-1990s, Osama
   bin Laden lived in Khartoum, the capital, as a guest of Sudan’s
   government.

   In 1998, Bin Laden’s agents blew up the United States Embassies in Kenya
   and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. In retaliation, Mr. Clinton
   ordered a cruise missile strike against a pharmaceutical factory in
   Khartoum.

   Since then, American-Sudanese relations have steadily soured. The conflict
   in Darfur, a vast desert region of western Sudan, was a low point. After
   rebels in Darfur staged an uprising in 2003, Sudanese security services
   and their militia allies slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians,
   leading to condemnation around the world, genocide charges at the
   International Criminal Court against Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan
   al-Bashir, and a new round of American sanctions.

   American officials said Thursday that the American demand that Mr. Bashir
   be held accountable had not changed. Neither has Sudan’s status as one of
   the few countries, along with Iran and Syria, that remain on the American
   government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

   Sales of military equipment will still be prohibited, and some Sudanese
   militia and rebel leaders will still face sanctions.

   But the Obama administration is clearly trying to open a door to Sudan.
   There is intense discontent across the country, and its economy is
   imploding. American officials have argued for years that it was time to
   help Sudan dig itself out of the hole it had created.

   Officials divulged Thursday that the Sudanese government had allowed two
   visits by American operatives to a restricted border area near Libya,
   which they cited as evidence of a new spirit of cooperation on
   counterterrorism efforts.

   In addition to continuing violence in Darfur, several other serious
   conflicts are raging in southern and central Sudan, along with a civil war
   in newly independent South Sudan, which Sudan has been suspected of
   inflaming with covert arms shipments.

   Eric Reeves, one of the leading American academic voices on Sudan, said he
   was “appalled” that the American government was lifting sanctions.

   He said that Sudan’s military-dominated government continued to commit
   grave human rights abuses and atrocities, and he noted that just last week
   Sudanese security services killed more than 10 civilians in Darfur.

   “There is no reason to believe the guys in charge have changed their
   stripes,” said Mr. Reeves, a senior fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud
   Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. “These guys are
   the worst of the worst.”

   Obama administration officials said that they had briefed President-elect
   Donald J. Trump’s transition team, but that they did not know if Mr. Trump
   would stick with a policy of warmer relations with Sudan.

   They said that Sudan had a long way to go in terms of respecting human
   rights, but that better relations could help increase American leverage.

   Mr. Reeves said he thought that the American government was being
   manipulated and that the Obama administration had made a “deal with the
   devil.”

   Continue reading the main story
