The sovereign council in Sudan confirmed on Sunday that the United States government has invited General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to visit Washington, reported Reuters.
The council said that the purpose of the visit will be to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of developing them.
“In a phone call today, the U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo invited the chairman of the sovereign council to visit the United States to review bilateral relations and means of developing them further,” the council said in a statement.
The statement added that the chairman of the sovereign council has welcomed the invitation and promised to fulfill it soon.
In December, Mike Pompeo, the U.S Secretary of State, said that the two countries planned to begin exchanging ambassadors after a 23-year hiatus.
The two countries had been at odds for decades. The United States began imposing economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997. Washington began listing it as one of the countries sponsoring terrorism since 1993. However, in 2017, the US decided to lift its economic sanctions on Sudan, but kept it on its terror sponsors list along with North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
The relations between Washington and Khartoum have improved since former President Omar al-Bashir’s overthrow in April 2019 and the formation of a civilian transitional government. Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and several other cabinet ministers have visited Washington since the transitional government was sworn in.
The Sudanese government is currently working to persuade Washington to remove it from the U.S list of countries sponsoring terrorism. The sanctions have made Sudan ineligible to get financial assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The talks to remove Sudan from the blacklist have gained momentum since Bashir’s ousting. Several US officials’ delegations and members of Congress have visited Sudan to analyze the situation.
