The African Union (AU) has said it will no longer broker talks between the Sudanese military and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) aimed at getting Sudan’s transition back on track after an October military coup, reported African News.
“The AU cannot continue these dishonest, opaque discussions which sideline participants or treat them in an unjust way,” Mohammed Belaiche, the AU ambassador to Sudan, told reporters late Tuesday.
The African bloc suspended Sudan after the October military coup that ousted a joint civilian-military transitional government that was established after the army’s 2019 ouster of long-time president Omar al-Bashir.
After the two coups, many foreign donors cut off aid, which accounts for 40 percent of state revenues. This forced military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to agree to talks led by the United Nations (UN), the AU and east African bloc IGAD earlier this month.
But all significant civilian players, including both Sudan’s established political parties and groups born out of the mass protests that led to Bashir’s ouster, have decided to boycott the talks with the military leaders. The only people who attended the inter-Sudanese dialogue were the military and their allies among the former rebels who signed a peace deal with Khartoum after Bashir’s ouster.
Since the American diplomats failed to persuade the civilian groups to give the talks a chance, the process has been put on hold indefinitely.
The AU representation in Khartoum have said rejecting the talks did not mean that the African Union bloc “withdraws from the troika” that it forms with the UN and the East African regional organisation Igad to supervise the dialogue between the military leaders and civilian groups.
The AU explains that it is now refusing to participate in certain activities because of the “opacity and lack of respect for the participants” in the ongoing dialogue.
