The Sudanese authorities announced today that the United States has extended an invitation to the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, to pay an official visit to Washington, in a step that is the first of its kind in more than three decades.
The council confirmed that its president had received the invitation in a phone call from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier today, and that the proof said he would respond to the invitation soon.
The council added - in a statement - that the purpose of the visit is to "discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of developing them", without specifying the date of the visit.
Pompeo - who invited the proof to visit the United States - said last December that the two countries planned to start exchanging ambassadors between them after a 23-year hiatus.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdock and other ministers visited Washington after taking the oath in the transitional government, and Al-Burhan visited a number of neighboring countries, as well as Russia.
It is noteworthy that relations between Sudan and the United States were tense in the nineties after the ouster of ousted President Omar al-Bashir in power in a coup in 1989 after the overthrow of an elected government.
In 1993, the United States included Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism because it hosted the regime of al-Bashir, the founder of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who was resident in the country between 1992 and 1996.
Washington redoubled its measures against Sudan by imposing tough trade sanctions on the country in 1997.
It decided to lift those restrictions in October 2017, but kept Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism alongside North Korea, Iran and Syria.
However, talks to remove Sudan from the blacklist have gained momentum since al-Bashir was ousted last April, and delegations of US officials and members of Congress visited Sudan, and Sudanese officials visited Washington, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdock.