JERUSALEM (JTA) — Sudan’s Cabinet did not know that the country’s leader was going to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss normalizing relations between the two countries.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the chief of Sudan’s transitional administration, the Sovereignty Council, briefed the Cabinet on Tuesday.
Netanyahu and al-Burhan had met the previous day in Entebbe, Uganda, at the residence of its president, Yoweri Museveni.
“I took this step from the standpoint of my responsibility … to protect the national security of Sudan and achieve the supreme interests of the Sudanese people,” Burhan said in a statement after briefing the council.
“It has been agreed to start a cooperation that will lead to normalizing the ties between the countries,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after the meeting on Monday.
The statement also said that al-Burhan “is interested in helping his country go through a process of modernization by taking it out of isolation and placing it on the map.”
Sudan is a member of the Arab League and joined other members in voting against President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan at a meeting in Cairo on Saturday. Sudan remains on a U.S. list of countries considered state sponsors of terrorism.
Following Sudan’s 30-year-long military dictatorship, protests that erupted in late 2018 resulted in a coup in April. The country currently is governed by the 11-member Sovereignty Council made up of members of the military and civilians. Al-Burhan, the council chairman, was formerly the general inspector of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
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