Burhan says he wants no visa while his own adviser says Sudan never refused the truce

Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had been scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Thursday 24 September. He did not travel. Speaking at Khartoum Stadium on Saturday 26 September before an audience of sports figures and content creators, he addressed the refusal for the first time: “We will not backtrack on what we said: we do not want a visa to any country, nor do we want their permission, nor do we want anything.” He added, “We will stay here with you until we die here in this country,” and set out a war aim without qualification: “Our goal is to eliminate this militia, no matter the cost… Our goal is to cleanse Sudan all the way to Darfur. We will not let them go; we will reach them wherever they entered, place by place.” It is the second consecutive year Burhan has not appeared in New York; Washington sanctioned him in January 2025, and Prime Minister Kamil Idriss led the delegation last year.

Reuters reported, via a Sudanese diplomatic source and a Western analyst described as close to American and Sudanese officials, that the visa was conditioned on Burhan signing a 90-day unconditional ceasefire proposed by Massad Boulos, the US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs. That is two anonymous sources, one of them not a participant. The State Department declined to comment, citing its policy on individual visa decisions, and Washington has not publicly confirmed any condition. Sudan’s permanent representative to the UN, Al-Harith Idriss, wrote to Secretary-General António Guterres asking for engagement with US authorities “at the highest appropriate level,” arguing Sudan had met all entry requirements and that barring a head of state breaches the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement. UN officials said they raised the matter with Washington; Guterres expressed serious concern at the non-issuance.

Then the divergence. Dr. Amjad Farid Al-Tayyib, foreign affairs adviser to Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, told Fox News Digital in an interview datelined United Nations and published within the last 24 hours: “We never rejected this proposal.” He said Sudan had submitted technical comments on the American paper rather than turning it down, that a negotiating team had intended to travel with Burhan, and that Washington had undermined the very process it was trying to advance by blocking the delegation. “The Sudanese government wants war with no one,” Farid said. Set against the stadium speech — in which Burhan committed to eliminating the Rapid Support Forces and reaching Darfur “place by place” — the two statements describe different postures toward the same proposal, issued by the same government inside two days.

Assessment: One of these accounts is for domestic consumption and one governs the file; the desk does not yet know which. The tell will be procedural, not rhetorical: whether a Sudanese technical delegation actually travels, or whether a written response to the Boulos paper surfaces. Note also what is not established. The visa-for-ceasefire linkage rests entirely on two anonymous sources carried by Reuters, with State declining comment — it is a reported condition, not a confirmed one. An on-the-record US confirmation or denial would change the story’s shape in either direction, and its absence is doing work for both capitals.