Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council has reiterated its refusal to hold a meeting between its chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (popularly known as Hemedti), emphasizing the importance of implementing the results of the recent summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) held in Djibouti to resolve the Sudanese crisis.
In its regular meeting, the Council stressed that the government sees no justification for holding the planned IGAD summit in Uganda on January 18 to discuss the situation in Sudan.
The Sovereignty Council had announced the day before yesterday, Saturday, that it received an invitation from IGAD to attend the Uganda summit, considering that “there is no need to hold a summit to discuss the matter of Sudan before implementing the outcomes of the previous summit in Djibouti.”
Conversely, Hemedti announced his acceptance of the IGAD invitation to attend the Uganda summit through his account on the “X” platform.
On December 27, Khartoum announced that Djibouti had informed it of the postponement of the meeting between al-Burhan and Hemedti to this month, following the failure of their scheduled encounter in the Djiboutian capital on December 28.
On December 11, 2023, IGAD issued the concluding statement of the Djibouti summit, stating that al-Burhan and Hemedti had agreed to hold a bilateral meeting between them, about seven months after the outbreak of fighting between the two sides in Sudan.
Arrests in the Umma Party
In other news, Sudan’s National Umma Party condemned what it called unjustified arrests of its leaders and members, as well as other political forces and activists, in addition to ongoing violations against citizens, according to a statement.
The National Umma Party stated that a force from the Rapid Support Forces militia arrested the assistant president of the party in Omdurman, and another force from the military intelligence of the Sudanese army arrested a member of the party’s executive office in the White Nile state.
Since mid-April 2023, the Sudanese army and Rapid Support Forces have been engaged in a conflict that has left more than 12,000 dead and upwards of 7 million displaced and refugees, according to the United Nations.
