ReliefWeb

LONDON (24 Aug .) - Leaders of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF, an alliance of the main rebel movements) on Friday met with the leader of the Khatmiyya sufi order and head of the mainstream Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Mohamed Osman El Mirghani, in London.

The meeting can be described as a major breakthrough in the relations between the party and the allied rebels. An SRF delegation composed of El Tom Hajo, head of SRF Media Relations and DUP member, and Yasir Arman, SRF’s Foreign Relations Secretary, and Secretary-General of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, discussed with El Mirghani the current political situation, and briefed him about the contents of the Paris Declaration.

They also consulted him about the talks both signatories of the Paris Declaration, the National Umma Party (NUP) and the SRF, are currently having with Sudanese opposition forces and civil society organisations, Arman told Radio Dabanga on Sunday.

Arman described the meeting with the DUP leader as “frank and heated”. “El Mirghani stressed that it is impossible to hold general elections, scheduled by the Sudanese government for April 2015, without a national consensus.”

According to a statement issued by the DUP after the encounter, El Mirghani said that the DUP “will always work for the benefit and the safety of the Sudanese and democracy”.

On 8 August, Malik Agar, chairman of the SRF and El Sadig El Mahdi, leader of the NUP, signed an accord in Paris, in which they agreed on unifying the Sudanese opposition forces in order to end the conflicts in the country, and work on a democratic transformation.