NewsRescue
Sudan’s government has rejected Kenya’s leadership of a crisis committee entrusted with mediating the country’s two-month-long conflict, which has killed at least 866 people and injured thousands, according to the World Health Organization.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry accused Nairobi on Thursday of lacking neutrality and siding with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the country’s army.
Kenyan President William Ruto was named chairman of an Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediation group comprised of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan.
Following his inauguration, Ruto stated that his government was dedicated to meeting the warring groups in Khartoum “face to face” in order to find a “lasting solution to the crisis.”
The Sudanese military-led Sovereign Council, on the other hand, has stated that it will not accept Ruto’s chairmanship because “statements by senior Kenyan officials and the behavior of its government confirmed that it adopts the positions of Rapid Support Forces (RSF), shelters its members, and provides them with various types of support.”
According to the ministry, the government has informed the IGAD of its position.
Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Abraham Korir Sing’Oei of Kenya said his government has received no official communication from Khartoum on the matter.
He went on to say that the nomination of Kenya’s president to lead the delegation “was arrived at by the IGAD summit and can only be vacated by the summit.”
In the following days, the leaders of the IGAD quartet will meet with the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the leader of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.
The meeting’s goal is to ensure safe passage for humanitarian aid delivery to war-torn communities in Khartoum and Darfur, as well as to launch an all-encompassing political procedure aimed at ending the military conflict that erupted on April 15.
