KHARTOUM: The United States on Monday removed Sudan from its state sponsors of terrorism blacklist and declared a "fundamental change" in relations, less than two months after the Arab nation pledged to normalise ties with Israel.
The move opens the way for aid, debt relief and investment to a country going though a rocky political transition and struggling under a severe economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
US President Donald Trump had announced in October that he was delisting Sudan, 27 years after Washington first put the country on its blacklist for harbouring Islamist militants.
The US embassy in Khartoum Monday said the step had been formalised, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later confirmed that "Sudan's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is officially rescinded".
"This represents a fundamental change in our bilateral relationship toward greater collaboration and support for Sudan's historic democratic transition," Pompeo said in a statement.
Sudan's army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan - who doubles as the head of the Sovereign Council, the country's highest executive authority - offered his "congratulations to the Sudanese people". "It was a task accomplished... in the spirit of the December revolution", he said on Twitter, referring to a landmark month in 2018 when protests erupted against dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir was deposed by the military in April 2019, four months into the demonstrations against his iron-fisted rule and 30 years after an Islamist backed coup had brought him to power.
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