US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Sudan's Sovereign Council chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Khartoum. (Photo: Press TV)
Abu Dhabi, September 22 (RHC)-- Sudan is apparently prepared to join the UAE and Bahrain in normalizing relations with the Israeli regime in return for over $3 billion in economic aid, a new report reveals.
According to Sudanese sources cited by Axios, an announcement on a normalization agreement with Israel similar to the ones struck with the UAE and Bahrain could be made within days should Washington and Abu Dhabi accommodate Khartoum’s request.
What Sudan demands is more than $3 billion in humanitarian assistance and direct budgetary aid in order to deal with an economic crisis and fallout from devastating floods, as well as a commitment by the U.S. and the UAE to providing Sudan with economic aid over the next three years.
In addition to economic aid, the Sudanese government wants the Trump administration to remove Sudan from the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list. This issue is indirectly connected to the normalization deal with Israel.
The issue of normalization between Sudan and Israel was raised last Tuesday in a meeting in Washington between Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed controversial normalization agreements with Israel at the White House last week amid outrage across Palestine and elsewhere throughout the Muslim world at the Arab regimes’ sheer betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
The deals were signed between Emirati and Bahraini Foreign Ministers, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. U.S. President Donald Trump also penned his blessing into the accords.
With the U.S.-brokered deals, the UAE and Bahrain have become only the third and fourth Arab states to ever normalize their relations with Israel after Egypt and Jordan.