The commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, announced his rejection of an agreement signed between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and a coalition of Sudanese political groups, stressing that the army will continue the war that broke out last April.
"We have no peace with them [the RSF]. We have no agreement with them," al-Burhan said while addressing SAF forces, vowing to continue the war, as quoted by local news website Al-Rakoba.
This follows a meeting between the Coordination of Civilian Democratic Forces (known as Taqadum and led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok) and RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The meeting resulted in the signing of a joint statement, in which the Rapid Support Forces agreed to an immediate and unconditional cessation of hostilities as the basis for a peaceful solution to end the ongoing conflict between the SAF and the RSF.
Following the meeting with Hamdok, the RSF commander invited the army to sign the same declaration, noting that this document would lay the foundation for peace negotiations to end the deadly conflict that began nine months ago.
Al-Burhan's latest comments raised concerns about his planned face-to-face meeting with Dagalo in Djibouti later this month. The Burhan-Dagalo meeting, facilitated by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), was originally scheduled to take place in late December, but has been postponed to an unspecified date in January 2024.