On a day when the headlines were dominated by stories about President Barack Obama's plan to reshape the auto industry, Obama took some time on March 30, 2009, to weigh in on Sudan.

"Obviously on a busy news day, I wanted us to make sure that we weren't losing sight of something that has been an ongoing international crisis, and that is the situation in Darfur," Obama began. "As many of you know, there has been a longstanding humanitarian crisis there, prompted by displacement and genocide that has been taking place. There have been a series of negotiations around resolving this crisis in Sudan. It has not gotten resolved, and it is now worsening."

Obama said Gen. Scott Gration, his special envoy to Sudan, will travel to Africa to address the crisis related to "the Khartoum government's expulsion of nongovernmental organizations that are providing aid to displaced persons inside of Sudan. And we have to figure out a mechanism to get those NGOs back in place, to reverse that decision, or to find some mechanism whereby we avert an enormous humanitarian crisis."

Gration also will be assigned to "reinvigorate the North-South agreement, make sure that it's implemented in an effective way, and that we are also exploring a mechanism whereby we can get talks between rebels and the Khartoum government that could help, once and for all, resolve the Darfur situation."

"This is going to be a very difficult task," Obama said. "It will be a time-consuming task. We don't expect any solutions overnight to the longstanding problems there." But, he said, there is a "bipartisan interest on the part of members of Congress around this issue — that I actually think that America can speak effectively with one voice and bring the moral and other elements of our stature to bear in trying to deal with this situation."

Obama said Gration would return and "report to me very shortly about what he's found there and additional steps that we can take to deal with this situation."

This is just an early step in what Obama acknowledges will be a long and difficult task. But the remarks show the issue is on the president's radar, and that he is committed to taking action toward trying to resolve the situation. In other words, this one is In the Works.