Special envoys from the US, the European Union, the UK, Norway, France and Germany have completed a joint visit to Sudan to assess first-hand the difficult transition process in the African country following the October 2021 military coup led by Abdelfatá al Burhan.
Right now there is, in principle, an «official» peace agreement, known as the Framework Agreement, driven by the military and still under development, which has already been rejected by numerous civil society groups, who have preferred to negotiate their own roadmap in Cairo, one in which the military has no place.
«The Framework Political Agreement process remains, in our view, the best basis on which to form a civilian-led transitional government,» according to the joint communiqué of the international representatives «and establish constitutional arrangements for a transitional period culminating in elections.»
«The Special Envoys and representatives strongly discouraged parallel processes,» adds the note, published by the EU Delegation to Sudan on its website.
The representatives call for «a concerted effort to finalize negotiations and reach a final agreement quickly to form a civilian-led transitional government to address Sudan’s urgent political, economic, humanitarian and security challenges.
Meanwhile, the so-called Sudan Quartet, represented by the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has proposed to the military a meeting with civilian forces who reject a Framework Agreement on the possibility that it will ultimately exonerate General Al Burhan from the violence deployed last year against civilians protesting against the military coup, which left around a hundred dead.
Among the latter are such prominent names as the current Minister of Finance Jibril Ibrahim, also leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the leader of a breakaway faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-MM) and Governor of Darfur Minni Minawi; and Jaafar El Mirghani, vice-president of the main Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
All three parties are members of the Forces for Freedom and Change-Democratic Bloc (FFC-DB) formed in November last year and all participants in the «Egyptian initiative».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
