Sudan says it is ready to pull its soldiers out of the contested Abyei region, former US president Jimmy Carter said after meeting Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir on Sunday.
“He has notified the negotiators he’s ready to withdraw troops from Abyei, which we believe is a major step forward,” Carter told reporters after he and Algeria’s former foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi held talks with the Sudanese president.
The two met Bashir as members of The Elders, a group of global leaders chaired by Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu, ahead of a planned resumption of talks between Sudan and South Sudan on Tuesday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
After the two nations came to the brink of all-out war in April, the UN Security Council called on them to cease hostilities along their contested border and to resume talks on a number of issues including the status of Abyei.
Sudan occupied the Abyei area one year ago.