Sudan’s President To Step Down In 2020
KABUL: (MEP) Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in an interview with BBC said he will step down by 2020 and has no plans to run for another term in office.
Bashir has been in power since a 1989 coup, and has been elected president three times since then.
Mr Bashir denied allegations of abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese forces in renewed violence against black African villages who took up arms in the country’s western Darfur region.
The Sudanese president, who was last re-elected in April 2015, dismissed the ICC tribunal for him as “politicized” and claimed that the accusations leveled against him by the court have increased his popularity among the Sudanese people and paved the way for his victory in the elections last year.
He told the BBC’s Thomas Fessy that his job was “exhausting” and his current term would be his last.
“In 2020, there will be a new president and I will be an ex-president,” he said.
The UN estimates as many as 300,000 people have been killed and almost 2.5 million people have been displaced during the ongoing conflict in Darfur.
Bashir demanded the West and the United States to be fair in their assessment of the situation in Sudan, pointing to his government’s efforts to achieve peace in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
He added that his government allowed the secession of South Sudan but the international community didn’t recognize their efforts.
Sudan says Washington didn’t honour its pledges to lift Sudan from the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism after the independence of South Sudan and kept sanctions for political reasons.
But Washington says Khartoum has to end the armed conflict in South Darfur and Blue Nile states and to settle Darfur crisis.
