The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has said it is ready to participate after the United States invited the warring sides in Sudan to mediated ceasefire talks. RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan \u201cHemedti\u201d Dagalo said early on Wednesday that the paramilitary group will participate. The US on Tuesday invited the RSF and Sudanese army to meet for talks in Switzerland on August 14, as efforts to end the conflict mount. The US announced that the negotiations will be co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and include the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations as observers. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement: \u201cThe talks in Switzerland aim to reach a nationwide cessation of violence, enabling humanitarian access to all those in need, and develop a robust monitoring and verification mechanism to ensure implementation of any agreement.\u201d Sudan\u2019s army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has yet to respond to the invitation. Dagalo said that the invitation to negotiate was \u201cwelcome\u201d. \u201cWe reaffirm our firm stance \u2026 which is the insistence on saving lives, stopping the fighting, and paving the way for a peaceful, negotiated political solution that restores the country to civilian rule and the path of democratic transition,\u201d the paramilitary leader said in a post on X. The brutal war between the RSF and the military government has raged in Sudan since April 2023. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and almost 10 million displaced, according to the United Nations, amid reports of numerous war crimes by both sides and a humanitarian crisis. A UN report issued on Tuesday found that nearly 26 million people in Sudan are not getting enough food due to the war. Blinken said that Washington remains \u201ccommitted to working with partners to end this devastating war\u201d. \u201cThese talks do not aim to address broader political issues. As the Sudanese people have long demanded, Sudan\u2019s governance must return to civilians and civilians must play the leading role in defining a process to address political issues and restore Sudan\u2019s democratic transition,\u201d he said. However, efforts so far to bring the war to an end have been met with little success. Direct talks in Saudi Arabia last year between the RSF and the army produced only agreements for temporary truces \u2013 which were quickly violated \u2013 and repeatedly failed to end the war. Subsequent mediation attempts have failed to get the warring sides into the same room, as both vied for the tactical advantage on the ground. Indirect talks held earlier this month in Geneva by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres\u2019s personal envoy were called an \u201cencouraging\u201d first step by the UN. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that the goal of the talks in Switzerland would be to try to resurrect and build on last year\u2019s talks in Jeddah. Both the RSF and the army continue to trade accusations of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians, indiscriminately shelling residential areas, and blocking humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has said it is ready to participate after the United States invited the warring sides in Sudan to mediated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18605,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}