KHARTOUM — The UN envoy to Sudan is due to launch
talks on Monday aiming to resolve an escalating political crisis triggered by a
military coup last year.
اضافة اعلان
The coup, led by army chief General
Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on October 25, derailed a power-sharing transition between the military and
civilians that had been painstakingly put together in the wake of longtime
autocrat Omar Al-Bashir's ouster in 2019.
Citizens have repeatedly taken to the streets in the last
two months or so to demand civilian rule — sometimes in their tens of thousands
— and at least 63 people have been killed amid a violent crackdown, according
to medics.
On Saturday, the UN announced that it would launch
"intra-Sudanese talks on Democracy and Transition" and the special
representative to Sudan Volker Perthes is set to hold a news conference to that
end at 2:00 pm local time on Monday.
But the response from key civilian factions in Sudan has
been lukewarm.
"We have yet to receive any details about the
UN initiative," said Jaafar Hassan, a spokesman for the mainstream faction of
the Forces for Freedom and Change, the leading civilian grouping.
"We are willing to take part in the talks on condition
that the purpose is to resume the democratic transition and remove the coup
regime, but we are against it if these talks seek to legitimise the coup
regime," he told AFP on Monday.
On Sunday, the
Sudanese Professionals Association, another
key faction, said it completely "rejected" the UN-facilitated talks.
Perthes said Saturday that the "UN-facilitated
intra-Sudanese political process aims at supporting Sudanese stakeholders to
agree on a way out of the current political crisis as well as a sustainable
path forward towards democracy and peace."
The UN's move has been welcomed by the US, UK, the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
Burhan has insisted that the military takeover "was not
a coup" but only meant to "rectify the course of the Sudanese transition".
Authorities have repeatedly denied using live ammunition in
confronting protesters and insist scores of security forces have been wounded
during demonstrations that have often "deviated from peacefulness".
A November 21 deal saw Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok
reinstated, after he spent weeks under house arrest in the wake of the coup.
But Hamdok resigned last week, saying he had tried to
prevent Sudan "from sliding toward disaster", but that the country
was now at a "dangerous crossroads threatening its very survival".
The
UN Security Council is to meet on Wednesday to discuss
the situation in Sudan.
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
