Sudan Appeal requests AUHIP meeting after rejection

The Sudanese opposition alliance, Sudan Appeal, has renewed its request to meet with the AU High-level Implementation Panel as soon as possible after rejecting a proposal by the panel's chairman to sit down for talks with Sudan's National Dialogue mechanism.

The Sudan Appeal does not concur with some of the points mentioned in a African Union's statement earlier this month and would welcome the chance to discuss these with the panel, the alliance stated in a a press release.

“As President Mbeki has been to Khartoum twice in recent months for meetings with the Government of Sudan, it is only fair that he should also meet the Sudan Call so that he is fully informed of its joint position before he briefs the AU Peace and Security Council.”

Sudan Appeal parties met with the AU Chief Mediator, former South African President Thabo Mbeki in Khartoum on 8 April, and announced their rejection of his proposal for negotiations between the Appeal and the mechanism of the National Dialogue.

Political secretary of the Sudanese Communist Party, Mohamed Mukhtar El Khatib, commented to Radio Dabanga today that Mbeki is working to impose “a soft landing on the people of Sudan, to find a way out for the regime so that it maintains power”. “But the continuation of this regime means the continuation of wars and problems.”

Negotiations

According to the AUHIP roadmap for a peace agreement between the Sudanse government and its opposition, the two sides of such negotiations should be the Sudanese government and Sudan Appeal; not the National Dialogue.

'Khartoum concluded its own dialogue insteawd of reaching an agreement with the Sudan Appeal.'

The press statement continues that Sudan Appeal remains committed to this roadmap which it signed in Addis Ababa on 8 August 2016, and is ready to implement the agreement in good faith on the basis of the understandings it sought from the AUHIP in a letter to Mbeki on 22 July.

However, the Sudanese government “concluded its own dialogue” on 10 October instead of reaching an agreement with the Sudan Appeal on how to stop the wars, deliver humanitarian relief to the conflict areas, and providing basic freedoms to all Sudanese citizens, the statement stressed. It was signed by the Sudanese Civil Society Initiative, the Umma Party, and the Sudan Revolutionary Front.