Sawsan Abu Husain
Wednesday April 24, 2019
African Union leaders meeting in Cairo on Tuesday gave Sudan’s transitional military council three months to hand over power to civilians.
The summit, which was chaired by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, saw the attendance of the presidents of Chad, Rwanda, Congo, Somalia, South Africa, and Djibouti in addition to the deputy prime minister of Ethiopia, foreign ministers of Uganda and Kenya, permanent secretary of Nigeria’s foreign ministry, head of the African Union commission and security affairs adviser of South Sudan’s president.
Since the ouster of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir earlier this month, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is leading the transitional military council.
The AU threatened on April 15 to suspend Sudan’s membership if the council didn’t hand out the authority to civilians within 15 days.
The summit statement on Tuesday expressed "the complete support of the African Union and neighboring countries for Sudan as it faces political, security and economic challenges."
The participating countries said they would help Sudan tackle cross-border crime including arms and human trafficking in order to maintain regional stability.
The meeting stressed that the Sudanese authorities and the political parties should work together in good faith to address the current situation in Sudan and to speed up the reestablishment of a constitutional regime.
"The participating countries recognized the need to give more time to the Sudanese authorities and the Sudanese parties to implement these measures, taking into consideration that they will not be lengthy, and recommended that the African Peace and Security Council extend the schedule given to the Sudanese authority for three months," added the statement.
Egyptian Presidential spokesman Ambassador Bassam Radi stated that Sisi, who holds the rotating African Union presidency, asserted during the summit the importance of setting a joint vision for stability in Sudan.
Sisi affirmed Egypt’s “full support for the choices of the Sudanese people, their free will in shaping their country’s future, and what they will agree upon in such crucial and determining phase of their history.”
“Establishing the concept of 'African solutions for African problems' is the only way to deal with joint challenges. The African states are most capable of understanding the complications of their issues, and the uniqueness of their affairs," the Egyptian president told the conference.