US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Sudan’s military leader to participate in talks next week on ending the devastating war, after the paramilitary group leader accepted.
Blinken, seeking an end to the conflict that has already killed tens of thousands and raised fears of famine, has invited both sides to ceasefire talks in Switzerland starting on August 14.
In a telephone call with Head of the Sovereign Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Blinken urged the army to participate and reiterated his call to “urgently end the fighting.”
Blinken told the army general that “convening national ceasefire talks is the only way to end the conflict, prevent the spread of famine and restore the civilian political process,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, head of the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which has been at war with the army since April 2023, had quickly welcomed Blinken’s invitation for the paramilitary unit to take part in the peace talks.
Last week, Sudan’s foreign ministry, which is aligned with the army, asked the United States for further discussions on the agenda and called for the RSF to pull out of areas and halt its expansion before negotiations.
Previous talks led by the United States and Saudi Arabia in the Saudi port city of Jeddah ended in failure.
A UN-backed assessment last week found that fighting has led to famine in the Zamzam camp near Darfur’s besieged city of El-Fasher.