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.

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.