Paris, France – The US special envoy for the Horn of Africa will visit Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Ethiopia next week amid ongoing crises in the two African nations, the State Department announced Friday.
David Satterfield and Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee will travel to Riyadh, Khartoum and Addis Ababa from January 17 to January 20.
In Riyadh, the pair will met with the Friends of Sudan, a group calling for the restoration of the country’s transitional government following a military coup in October.
Satterfield and Phee will then travel to Khartoum, where they will meet with pre – democracy activists, women’s and youth groups, civil organizations and military and political figures.
‘Their message will be clear: the United States is committed to freedom, peace, and justice for the Sudanese people’, the statement read.
In Ethiopia, the pair will talk with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to seek a resolution to the deepening civil war.
‘They will encourage government officials to seize the current opening for peace by ending the air strikes and other hostilities’, the statement read.
They will also ask for the establishment of a ceasefire, the release of political prisoners and the restoration of humanitarian access.
Satterfield, the former US ambassador to Turkey, was appointed to replace Jeffrey Feltman as special envoy on January 6.
Feltman quit just as he visited Ethiopia in a bid to encourage peace talks to end more than a year of war following the withdrawal of Tigrayan rebels.
The Tigray people’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which last year threatened to march on Addis Ababa, by December had withdrawn to its stronghold, and the government has pursued the rebels further on the ground.
Feltman has also sought to tackle the crisis in Sudan, but he was treated unceremoniously in October when Sudan’s military ruler, General Abdel Fattah al – Burhan, carried out a coup just after the US envoy had left the country.
Feltman’s resignation came days after Sudan’s civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, quit, leaving Burhan as the undisputed leader of the country despite calls to preserve a democratic transition launched in 2019.
ARABIA 5AM NEWS 
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