The United States is "cautiously optimistic" that warring sides in Sudan will agree to a new temporary truce during talks in Saudi Arabia to allow the transfer of humanitarian aid, a senior US official said today.
The army under General 'Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Force paramilitaries under General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo sent negotiators to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday for “preliminary talks”, only " of a technical nature" on the creation of safe corridors for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
"Our objective for these talks was strictly focused first on securing agreement on a statement of humanitarian principles and then on achieving a ceasefire sufficient to allow the continued transfer of an "absolutely necessary" humanitarian aid, Victoria Nuland, a senior US State Department official, told a Senate committee.
"I spoke to our negotiators this morning, who are cautiously optimistic," she said.
President Joe Biden warned last week that he would adopt sanctions against the parties involved in the conflict.
When asked about such a possibility, Victoria Nuland stated that the United States would “consider appropriate targets in various categories, particularly if we do not secure from these generals (the passage of) humanitarian aid and the surrender of weapons”.
– Transfer of humanitarian aid to Port-Sudan –
Powerful explosions rocked Khartoum today, the 26th day of Sudan's power war between the military and paramilitaries, with no progress so far in negotiations to create corridors to push aid and to free civilians trapped in conflict hotspots.
Those who remain in Khartoum, a city of five million people, live fortified in their homes. Without water and electricity, with little food and less and less money, they survive an unbearable heat thanks to networks of solidarity between neighbors and relatives. Now almost no hospital operates in the capital.
Before the war, one in three Sudanese suffered from hunger. If the war continues, up to 2.5 million more people will suffer from hunger every day, the UN predicts.
According to an AFP correspondent, two Saudi planes loaded with humanitarian aid have landed in Port-Sudan. , a port city in eastern Sudan that has been spared the violence and where the UN and a growing number of NGOs are trying to negotiate the transport of these cargoes to areas where hospitals and aid stocks have been looted or bombed.
< p> The UN World Food Program (PAM) is resuming its regular air links between Port-Sudan and Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in order to "ensure the transfer of aid and vital humanitarian personnel", announced the representative of the UN secretary general.
Source: APE-MPE-AFP
