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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Sudan’s military leaders to attend talks next week on ending the devastating war after the leader of a Sudanese paramilitary group accepted an invitation.
Blinken, seeking to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and raised fears of famine, invited both sides to begin ceasefire talks in Switzerland on August 14.
Blinken urged the army to engage in a phone call with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s sovereign council, and reiterated calls for an “urgent end to the fighting.”
Blinken told Army generals that “convening nationwide ceasefire negotiations is the only way to end the conflict, prevent the spread of famine, and resume the civilian political process,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the army since April 2023, was quick to welcome Blinken’s invitation to the paramilitaries to participate in the peace talks.
Last week, Sudan’s military-aligned Foreign Ministry asked the United States for further discussions on the agenda and called on the Rapid Security Forces to withdraw from the areas and stop their expansion before negotiations.
Earlier, U.S.-Saudi talks in the Saudi port city of Jeddah ended in failure.
Last week, a UN-backed assessment found that the fighting had led to famine in the Zam Zam refugee camp near the besieged city of El Fasher in Darfur.
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