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Sudan Suspends IGAD Mediation Efforts


FILE — Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan delivers a speech during the 39th IGAD extraordinary summit in Nairobi on July 5, 2022.
FILE — Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan delivers a speech during the 39th IGAD extraordinary summit in Nairobi on July 5, 2022.

CAIRO — Sudan has suspended its involvement in mediation efforts with IGAD, a group of East African nations that sought to broker talks between the army and the paramilitary force it has been fighting for months, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

IGAD had offered to mediate between the heads of the Sudanese Armed Forces, SAF, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, RSF.

The mediation efforts by the East African leaders included hosting a meeting - to which leaders of the rival forces had agreed.

Sudan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that dealings with IGAD were suspended after the regional group added the nation to the agenda of a meeting scheduled for Jan. 18 in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and invited RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, to attend.

Hemedti recently emerged from months under cover to visit several African countries and meet with Sudanese pro-democracy political figures.

Conflict in Sudan erupted in mid-April over a plan for a political transition away from military rule. It has caused a major humanitarian crisis, devastated the capital Khartoum, and sparked ethnically driven killings in Darfur.

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