Haavisto says UN talks with the RSF are weeks away, with no commitment from either belligerent

Pekka Haavisto, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Sudan, told The National in an interview published 2 November that talks with the RSF and its allies on a transition to civilian rule are expected within weeks, and that good meetings had already been held with the army’s allies and with the anti-war coalition. “Diplomatically, the efforts are strong, and now even more strong than some years ago,” he said. An aggregator report days later rendered his position more cautiously — that the UN is “still waiting for a meeting with Hemedti’s bloc to take place before Christmas” — a materially weaker formulation that has not been matched in a primary interview. The Soufan Center, in an IntelBrief dated 4 November, supplied the deflation: 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 baseline is thin. At the Sixth Consultative Meeting on peace initiatives in Geneva on 21 October, 21 countries and five international organisations attended and neither belligerent was represented; Haavisto, co-chairing, said both the regular armed forces and the RSF still believe in a military victory and that there is no military solution. Burhan rejected negotiations outright on 8 October and vowed to retake all territory. Chief of Staff General Yasir al-Atta said on 1 November that the armed forces are advancing on Darfur and Kordofan against alleged mercenaries, and again accused the UAE of backing them — which is also why Port Sudan has shunned the Quad framework, Foreign Minister Salim having said in November 2025 that Khartoum deals with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United States “in bilateral capacities.”

The machinery continues regardless of whether anyone shows up. The UN’s political affairs department records Haavisto concluding a two-day visit to Manama on 1 November around the IISS Manama Dialogue, following the Tana Forum in Addis Ababa and a retreat of regional envoys; on 5 November, Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Guang Cong briefed the Security Council on resolution 2046 and warned that Sudan’s war continues to threaten stability in Abyei and the wider border region. Washington pressed for a humanitarian truce at the UN on 16 October, with Sudan’s ambassador Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed replying that his government had submitted proposals for civilian protection, a ceasefire and monitoring mechanisms. One date to watch this month: a sanctions tracker records the Council extending the resolution 1591 regime on 15 September for a single month, to November 2026, to allow discussion of expanding it — the exact expiry has not been independently confirmed here.

Assessment: A pre-Christmas meeting is a scheduling ambition, not a negotiation, and the distinction matters because the last comparable effort — the Quad’s September 2025 truce framework, later described by Massad Boulos as a deal awaiting Security Council submission — was never shown to have reached the Council at all. Both commanders are currently telling their own publics they are winning: an army claiming a corridor to Darfur and an RSF burning power stations has no reason to arrive at a table in December. Watch the 1591 rollover instead. Sanctions expiry is the one deadline the belligerents do not control, and it will reveal whether the Council can still agree on Sudan at all.