On Saturday, representatives of two Sudanese generals who have been at war are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss a cease-fire and mechanisms for allowing humanitarian aid into the country, according to U.S., Saudi, and Sudanese officials. The U.S. State Department and the Saudi foreign ministry have helped organize the meeting, which will take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the Red Sea across from Sudan. The Saudi government has been running evacuation ships between Jeddah and Port Sudan. Although the two generals have agreed to cease-fires in recent days, their troops have violated them.
The Sudanese army confirmed in a post on Facebook that its delegation left for Jeddah on Friday evening to discuss “specific details of the armistice,” which is aimed at “securing and creating appropriate conditions for dealing with the humanitarian situation of our citizens.”
The U.S. and Saudi governments released a joint statement on Friday night that said they “urge both parties to take in consideration the interests of the Sudanese nation and its people and actively engage in the talks towards a cease-fire and end to the conflict, which will spare the Sudanese people’s suffering and ensure the availability of humanitarian aid to affected areas.”
A senior State Department official said the discussions in Jeddah would not include negotiations over the volatile issues around integration of the armed forces and chain of command that led to the start of fighting on April 15 between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who controls the Sudanese military, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
African officials are expected to manage those talks whenever they start, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate diplomacy. Two African institutions, the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, would take leading roles.
Since the conflict began, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other State Department officials have been talking directly to the generals and trying to coordinate efforts with a partnership of countries with influence in Sudan called the Quad. Those are the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Britain.
The State Department said on Friday that Mr. Blinken had spoken with Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, about the fighting in Sudan. Mr. Blinken thanked Saudi Arabia for helping get U.S. citizens from Sudan to Jeddah, and the two diplomats “affirmed their countries’ intensive collaboration on diplomatic work to bring about an end to the fighting in Sudan,” the State Department said in a summary of the call.
The fighting in Sudan has left at least 550 people dead and nearly half a million displaced, according to Sudanese government statistics and the United Nations. The actual number of the dead is almost certainly much higher.
Sudanese civilians and officials have been working with…
2023-05-05 20:47:35
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