UN envoy says talks with the RSF are weeks away, nine months after Washington declared a deal agreed

Speaking in Bahrain on 2 November, UN Special Envoy Pekka Haavisto said the UN plans to hold talks with the RSF before Christmas on Sudan’s transition to civilian rule, after meetings with parties close to the army and with the anti-war coalition. “Diplomatically, the efforts are strong, and now even more strong than some years ago,” he told The National, which also reported that the United States has declared there is “no future” for either of Sudan’s warring generals in the country’s political leadership. The Soufan Center’s 4 November brief is cooler: the planned engagement “does not yet represent a direct agreement between the warring parties or a commitment to a ceasefire,” and Haavisto has acknowledged that the RSF and Hemedti have yet to commit. The aggregator Rio Times reported him saying the UN is “still waiting” for the meeting, with Addis Ababa named only as a possible venue.

The precedent sits close. On 3 February 2026, Massad Boulos, the US presidential adviser on African affairs, said at a humanitarian conference in Washington that the Quad — the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — had reached a peace document acceptable to both parties. Nine months on there is no truce. The Quad’s 2025 roadmap called for an initial three-month humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire and a civilian-led transition within nine months; the International Crisis Group noted in April that the roadmap “has yet to get off the ground.” Rio Times recorded the Polymarket price on a Sudan ceasefire by 31 December 2026 at 10.5 per cent on 3 November — a thin bet market rather than a forecast, but a useful counterweight to the envoy’s register.

Separately, the Emirati diplomat Lana Nusseibeh, a candidate for UN Secretary-General, said on 4 November that the RSF must be held accountable for atrocities committed during the war and that she would support UN-appointed investigators in Sudan, where both the RSF and the army stand accused of grave wrongdoing. She was responding to a Politico report that Sudan’s army-backed government opposes her bid over alleged Emirati support for the RSF, which the UAE denies. The interview ran in The National, which is Abu Dhabi-owned.

Assessment: Read Haavisto’s announcement as structurally identical to Boulos’s in February: a statement about intent to meet, not a statement about a party agreeing to stop. The tell is the absence of a date, a venue or a confirmed RSF counterparty. The accountability contest around the Secretary-General race belongs in the same frame — Khartoum is lobbying against the candidate of a state it accuses of arming its enemy, and that candidate is campaigning on prosecuting that enemy. Neither position is evidence about the war; both are positions about who writes its ending.