Stakeholders meet in Addis ‘to design Sudan’s political process’

Political and civil society groups, including women’s and youth groups, and armed movements from Sudan held a closed meeting with various authorities in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa today to discuss the design of a political process for their conflict-torn country, Ashraf Abdelaziz reports for Radio Dabanga.

The Sudanese parties met with the president of the African Peace and Security Council, Bankole Adeoye, the chair of the High-Level Mechanism, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, and the representative of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), at the headquarters of the African Union (AU) this morning.

The official spokesperson for the Civilian Democratic Forces, Bakri El Jak, told Radio Dabanga: “The meeting is technical for consultation and to inform the African Union of the vision of the political forces to design the political process.”

El Jak denied that the African Union meeting of Sudanese political forces is a second round of the first preparatory meeting held by Sudanese political forces under the auspices of the African Union on July 15.

Main objective

The secretary-general of the Civilian Democratic Forces, Siddig El Sadig El Mahdi, praised the consultative approach followed by both the African Union and IGAD in organising this meeting, the importance of which stems from enabling the Sudanese to own and manage the political process.

The main objective of the meeting is to agree on the design of the political process, which includes reaching an agreement on its parties as well as agreeing on urgent issues, most notably the delivery of humanitarian aid, the cessation of hostilities, and the protection of civilians. In addition, the issues of the political process will be agreed upon, with a link to the cessation of hostilities track that began in Jeddah, and we hope that it will be agreed upon in the meeting that the USA will call for the two parties to the war in Switzerland on August 14.

The civil track

According to El Mahdi, the meeting also seeks to agree on the civil transition track that will be agreed upon in the political process with the participation of the two parties to the war. The meeting agenda also includes seeking to unify the platforms or at least coordinate with important effective platforms, such as the Jeddah platform that includes the USA and Saudi Arabia, and the Manama platform that includes the Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to the United Nations, which took the initiative, thankfully, to bring together representatives of the two parties to agree on facilitating humanitarian operations and protecting civilians.

Design

“The meeting parties will agree upon will be presented to the African Union and IGAD, and we hope that it will be adopted.

He added that the regional and international will is now united and moving effectively to stop the war, and this is good news. We are currently working to unify the national will in order to silence the sound of guns and stop the bloodshed, genocide, rape, displacement, and destruction, so that peace and stability may prevail in our beloved country.”

An important step

The political secretary of the Popular Congress Party, Kamal Omar, described the meeting as an important step and told Radio Dabanga: The meeting is likely to dot many i’s and cross the t’s and chart the path for the future of the Sudanese political process after the cessation of the war.

Mohamed El Nayer, the official spokesperson for the Sudan Liberation Movement headed by Abdelwahid Mohamed Nur (SLM-AW) told Radio Dabanga that the SLM-AW decided to participate in the meeting after it was certain that the dissolved National Congress would not participate.

The meeting will be attended by the Civil Democratic Forces, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North El Hilu, the SLM-AW, the Popular Congress Party, the original Unionist Party chaired by Mohamed El Hasan El Mirghani, and the original Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party.