- 7-Eleven owner confirms new takeover offer from Couche-Tard
- Goodbye Tito? Tomb at risk as Serbs argue over Yugoslav legacy
- Restoration experts piece together silent Sherlock Holmes mystery
- Sinner avoids Shanghai deja vu with assured Shelton win
- Pyongyang to 'permanently' shut border with South Korea
- Trumpet star Marsalis says jazz creates 'balance' in divided world
- No children left on Greece's famed but emptying island
- Nepali becomes youngest to climb world's 8,000m peaks
- Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study
- A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene's devastation firsthand
- Padres edge Dodgers, Mets on the brink
- Can carbon credits help close coal plants?
- With EU funding, Tunisian farmer revives parched village
- Sega ninja game 'Shinobi' gets movie treatment
- Boeing suspends negotiations with striking workers
- 7-Eleven owner's shares spike on report of new buyout offer
- Your 'local everything': what 7-Eleven buyout battle means for Japan
- Three million UK children living below poverty line: study
- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
Sudan ceasefire talks start despite army no-show
US-sponsored talks on agreeing a ceasefire in the devastating conflict in Sudan kicked off in Switzerland on Wednesday, despite the Sudanese government staying away.
War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army under the country's de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
"The talks have started," a spokesman for the US mission in Geneva told AFP, adding that there was "no change" to the non-participation of the Sudanese government.
The brutal conflict has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
While the RSF is taking part in the talks, the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) are unhappy with the format arranged by Washington.
"The RSF delegation has arrived in Switzerland. Our US delegation, and the collective international partners, technical experts and Sudanese civil society, are still waiting on the SAF. The world is watching," Tom Perriello, the US special envoy for Sudan, said before the talks began.
He urged the government to "seize the opportunity", saying after the opening session that it was "high time for the guns to be silenced".
- Humanitarian access -
The talks, which could last up to 10 days, are being held behind closed doors in an undisclosed location in Switzerland.
They are co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and Switzerland, with the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations acting as a steering group.
Sudanese Media Minister Graham Abdelkader said ahead of the talks that the government was rejecting "any new observers or participants" -- after Washington "insisted on the participation of the United Arab Emirates as an observer".
The Sudanese army has repeatedly accused the UAE of backing the RSF.
Without the SAF, other attendees will press on with the talks' agenda.
The fighting has forced one in five people to flee their homes, while tens of thousands have died. More than 25 million across the country -- more than half its population -- face acute hunger.
"Our focus is to move forward to achieve a cessation of hostilities, enhance humanitarian access and establish enforcement mechanisms that deliver concrete results," Perriello said.
- Pressure on Burhan -
Previous talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah came to nothing.
Ramtane Lamamra, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' personal envoy on Sudan, held separate meetings in Geneva last month with the warring parties to discuss humanitarian aid and protecting civilians.
He is leading the UN observer delegation and wants "tangible progress towards an immediate ceasefire", urging both sides to "commit to genuine dialogue", the United Nations said.
Alan Boswell, the Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said Burhan was facing "serious internal divisions", with some in his camp in favour of talks and others "fiercely opposed".
"Restarting the talks at all would be a breakthrough, given that there have not been formal talks since last year," he told AFP.
Notably, with the United States in charge, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt present, "that puts all the main outside actors with leverage over the warring parties in one room together", he added.
A government no-show leaves Burhan under mounting external pressure, if he is seen as "the main obstacle to ending the war", Boswell said.
- No let-up in fighting -
Cameron Hudson, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Africa programme, said Washington had "tried to create the illusion of momentum" to force the SAF's hand, "but it was a bluff and the SAF saw through it."
"They know that Washington does not have the stomach to impose real consequences on them for non-compliance," he told AFP.
"The only way to get them to talk is through brute force: either the risk of losing the war on the battlefield, the risk of real diplomatic isolation and the risk of real economic devastation for them. None of that pressure currently exists."
There has been no let-up in the fighting.
The Emergency Lawyers -- a group of volunteer lawyers who have documented human rights violations during the war -- reported "increased indiscriminate artillery shelling by the RSF on civilian areas" this week, particularly in El-Fasher and Omdurman, where they report strikes on a school, a bus carrying civilian passengers and a hospital.
An eyewitness in Omdurman, across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, reported to AFP "heavy artillery shelling from the RSF for the seventh day straight".
burs-rjm/apo/kjm
M.Fischer--AMWN