By putting his December 2025 peace plan back on the table, the prime minister is seeking to entrench his government’s primacy over the RSF with the international community. The move comes after the European rebuff at the Berlin Conference, which failed to produce any progress in negotiations between the warring parties.
The announcement took on the air of a diplomatic offensive. By calling for an inter-Sudanese dialogue by the end of May, the head of the loyalist government, Kamil Idris, is trying to revive the crisis-exit framework entrusted to him by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF, the regular army).
Yet the plan is anything but new. It had already been presented to the United Nations Security Council in December 2025 and endorsed by the Sovereignty Council, the executive body of the pro-SAF government. The roadmap calls for an inter-Sudanese dialogue intended to lead the country towards elections; a ceasefire supervised by the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League; and the demilitarization of areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Four months on, the initiative, ignored at the Berlin Conference, has failed to materialize.
The international community is reluctant to back a roadmap drawn up by an executive that was directly formed from the army. Endorsing it would legitimize the SAF’s grip over state institutions, while simultaneously giving up on demanding accountability in the war that has been tearing the country apart for more than three years. Frustrated, Idris is trying to press ahead to impose the army’s vision by appealing to a national union.
Roadmap stamped by the SAF
The dialogue is far from being the “inclusive” forum that was promised. By repeatedly describing the RSF as “rebel militias” lacking legitimacy, Port Sudan is immediately excluding its main opponent from the negotiating table. But the lack of representation goes even further. Since the start of the conflict, the regular army has arrested activists, humanitarian workers and political figures accused of complicity with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemeti”.
The dialogue, which is meant to convey the image of a united front, also reveals, by omission, the cracks within the pro-SAF camp. Among the parties at the top of the list for the future transitional legislative council announced by Burhan, the Democratic Unionist Party–Original (DUP-O), led by Jaafar al-Mirghani, sees the dialogue as the blueprint for the future Sudanese political order. However, Qariballah al-Samani’s historic Unionist Alliance, the breakaway formation from the wing led by Babikir Faisal, takes the opposite view, arguing that the initiative is premature.
The Somoud opposition coalition, led by the former prime minister Abdallah Hamdok, who took part in the Berlin meeting, remains on the fringes of the process. Despite Port Sudan’s promises to remove obstacles to the participation of its members, beginning with renewing their passports, the necessary actions have yet to materialize.
Red line
Burhan’s allies, concerned about being marginalized in the post-war political order, are increasing pressure on the SAF chief. His red line, aligned with the positions of Cairo and Riyadh, remains non-negotiable: no dialogue without a ceasefire.
On 27 April, the Democratic Bloc, bringing together different components aligned with the general, met in Port Sudan and called for a comprehensive peace process “making possible a democratic transition”, announcing the formation of a new federalising structure placed under the leadership of Mirghani. According to participants, the meeting did not settle vital issues, including the integration of armed movements into the SAF, or what stance to take towards international initiatives.
As Idris seeks to project the image of a country moving towards normalisation and reconstruction, Sudan continues to seethe. In recent months, fighting has intensified in Darfur and Kordofan, in parallel with RSF strikes on Khartoum.
