Volker Peretz, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN and the director of the “UNITAMS” mission, announced the start of preliminary negotiations for a political process with Sudanese parties on Saturday.
Peretz stated in a statement that “repeated violence against peaceful demonstrators has contributed to deepening mistrust among all political parties in Sudan,” expressing his “grave concern” that the current political impasse will “slide the country towards more instability and waste the gains that have been achieved since the establishment of the revolution.”
“The process that the UN will enable will be for everyone, and all major players, civilian and military, including armed movements, political parties, civil society, women’s groups, and resistance committees,” UNITAMS’s leader added.
The UN statement came hours after the Sudanese Sovereign Council’s head, Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, received a phone call from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “in which the importance of stabilizing the transitional period and encouraging dialogue between all Sudanese parties was emphasized, to ensure a smooth transition that leads to elections.”
The US State Department stated on Saturday that the Quartet, which includes Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the UK, and the US, welcomes the announcement that the UN Mission to Support the Transition in Sudan will launch an initiative to facilitate discussions to resolve the country’s political crisis.
On Saturday, an official source in the League of Arab States’ General Secretariat welcomed the announcement by the UN, through its envoy to Sudan, to work with Sudanese parties to facilitate a political process aimed at facilitating Sudanese dialogue and addressing the transitional period’s difficulties.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry also welcomed the dialogue between Sudanese parties and praised the role of the UN and the efforts of the UN Integrated Mission to Support the Transitional Phase in Sudan to facilitate dialogue, encourage consensus values, improve dialogue language, and revitalize the political process in a statement.
