WASHINGTON: A senior US State Department official said on Tuesday that Sudan’s warring parties are not taking advantage of dialogue initiated by the Washington and Riyadh meant to yield a long-term truce as they earlier agreed.
The official told the media on condition of anonymity that the United States is consulting with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and others in the middle east and Africa regarding a way forward and hoped to announce a suggested approach in the upcoming days.
Warring Parties Not Taking Advantage of Dialogue to Achieve Agreed Ceasefire in Sudan: Washington
The official added, “We have given them the venue to try to come together and find a way forward that doesn’t involve achieving an outcome that’s based on military dominance and violence,”.
He added that the warring parties are clearly not taking advantage of the dialogue. He said, “It is not succeeding in the way the two warring parties had originally agreed in terms of this step-by-step procedure to reach a lasting end of hostilities.”
The conflict between the army and the RSF began in mid-April and has forced more than 2 million people to flee and wrecked the economy in Sudan. The talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, have failed to end fighting permanently as a truce ended on Sunday. The US officials said that the army also denied to extend that 24-hour truce.
Artillery fire, airstrikes, and gunfire erupted in Khartoum and adjoining cities Omdurman and Bahri. As many as 866 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in the current wave of violence in Sudan, the UN said on Thursday.
Another official of the State Department told the media there was a “dawning realization” among the rival parties that there was no military solution to the matter. However, it had not yet translated into the willingness to take concrete measures to lock in a longer truce and a broader permanent end of hostilities, the official further said.
