Sudan welcomes US lifting of travel ban

Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the Washington’s decision to remove Sudan from its travel ban list.

In a statement on Monday, the Ministry welcomed the presidential proclamation, announced by the American Administration on Sunday, by which Sudan was removed from the list of countries whose citizens are restricted from entering the USA.

The Ministry considers the decision “an important positive development in the bilateral relations between the Sudan and the USA, and “a natural result” of “a close cooperation between the two countries in international and regional questions of mutual interest”.

The Ministry further “would like to reaffirm the resolve of the Government of Sudan to exert more efforts with the American Administration for removal of any hurdles in the way to total normalisation of the bilateral relations between the two countries [..]”, the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported today.

In January, President Donald Trump stopped the issuing of new visas for nationals from seven Muslim-majority nations: Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan. In a revised version, in March, Iraq was excluded from the travel restrictions.

The new list has been expanded with Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela. It falls short of a complete ban, and instead tailors travel restrictions on a country-by-country basis.

No reasons were given for the removal of Sudan from the list, but the Washington Post reported on Sunday that US officials pointed to Khartoum's cooperation on counterterrorism.

“Senior administration officials said a review of Sudan’s cooperation with the US government on national security and information-sharing showed it was appropriate to remove them from the list,” the newspaper states.

The new restrictions, to take effect on 18 October, resulted from a review after President Donald Trump’s original travel bans were challenged in court.