Mossad head Yossi Cohen met with the deputy chairman of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, in addition to which was mediated by UAE officials, according to a Haaretz report on Saturday, citing a report from the London-based Qatari-owned newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Jadid. It was reported that the UAE official involved in the mediation process was Tahanoon Ben-Zayed. Sudan has denied the report of the meeting.
Sudanese Sovereign Council is a joint military-civilian body overseeing the transitional government following the ouster of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir, with elections expecting to take place in 2020, marking a move towards democratic governance.
According to the report, council member Mohamed al-Faki said he had no knowledge of the meeting, and that the council is unwilling to discuss the issue.
The report of a meeting came amid numerous reports of high-level discussions between Israeli and Sudanese officials on establishing normalized relations, amid the recent UAE-Israel normalization agreement and widely publicized meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan, Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan and head of the Sudanese military, in February in Uganda.
Similarly, Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Haidar Badawi al-Sadiq told Sky News Arabia that Sudan looks forward to a peace agreement with Israel on Wednesday, which was later backtracked.
Speaking to the Associated Press, a Sudanese government official indicated that Sudan-Israel talks have been talking place for months, mediated by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
"It's a matter of time before we close all the edges," the unnamed official said.
"The move by the UAE has encouraged us and reassured some of the government voices who feared a public reaction in Sudan."