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Sudan military rulers brief US envoy: state media
KHARTOUM, April 14, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Sudan’s new military rulers briefed
Washington’s top envoy to Khartoum on Sunday about security after the army’s
ouster of veteran leader Omar al-Bashir, state media reported.
Steven Koutsis met with the military council’s deputy Mohammad Hamdan
Daglo, widely known as Himeidti, at the presidential palace in Khartoum.
The Sudanese deputy briefed Koutsis on the current situation in the
country and the reason for forming the military council, the official SUNA
news agency reported as state television broadcast footage of their meeting.
“Himeidti told him about the measures taken by the military council to
preserve the security and stability of the country,” SUNA reported.
Sudan’s military council headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took
power after the army ousted Bashir on Thursday.
Himeidti heads Sudan’s controversial counter-insurgency unit — the Rapid
Support Force (RSF) — which rights groups have accused of abuses in the war-
torn Darfur region.
About 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since a brutal conflict
erupted there in 2003, when ethnic rebels took up arms against the Arab-
dominated government of Bashir.
The United States, which has blacklisted Sudan as a state sponsor of
terrorism, has insisted that Khartoum needs to improve its human rights
record if it wants to be removed from the list.
Washington imposed sanctions on Sudan in 1997 for its alleged links to
Islamists which were lifted in October 2017, but the much awaited economic
recovery has failed to materialise.
BSS/AFP/RY/1726 hrs