U.S Secretary Blinken Meets President Ruto: Key Talks Unfold
On Sunday, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he had held discussions with Kenyan President William Ruto to further shared interests between Kenya and the United States.
Blinken noted in a statement that among the topics that were discussed were putting an end to the crisis in Sudan and making progress in the talks that are being led by the East African Community in the eastern DRC.
Ruto has been at the forefront of efforts to mediate a settlement that will lead to the return of democratic governance in beleaguered Sudan.
The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting since April 15, and even though there have been repeated offers of international mediation, none of them have been successful in putting an end to or even significantly slowing the violence.
At the beginning of this month, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc in East Africa that Kenya is a member of, presented an initiative that would include the deployment of peacekeepers in the capital city of Khartoum.
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The Sudanese army has on multiple occasions expressed its opposition to the initiative that was led by Kenya and accused Kenya of providing support to the RSF.
It has been stated that it will treat any foreign peacekeepers as hostile forces regardless of their country of origin.
As sessions of the Consultative Technical Team, which included many stakeholders in the region’s Peace Process, have been conducted to consider various topics brought up in the Luanda and Nairobi processes, the armed conflict has also broken out in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
During the sessions, the issues of the cantonment and confidence-building measures, as well as the conflicting parties in the eastern region of the DRC, have been the primary topics of discussion.
The objective of the technical team, which has been facilitated by the former President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, has been to provide sustainable peace solutions to the conflict.
Additionally, he has pleaded with all of the armed factions to put an end to the fighting and give diplomacy a chance.
U.S Secretary Blinken Meets President Ruto: Key Talks Unfold
