POLITICO: Sudan urges EU to stop arms sales to UAE

Sudan’s Ambassador to Belgium and the EU, Abdelbagi Kabeir, has warned that European-made weapons are finding their way onto Sudanese battlefields and exacerbating atrocities in the country’s two-year civil war.

He urged EU member states to halt arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, which a United Nations panel investigated earlier this year over allegations that it is supporting a notorious rebel militia involved in the conflict, Caliber.Az reports, citing POLITICO.

“The EU should weigh the moral balance over the trade balance,” Kabeir said.

He stressed that the bloc is “bound by its own values” to ensure that European weapons are not re-exported to conflict zones such as Sudan. “Those weapons were not intended for third-party use,” the ambassador noted, adding that the allegations place the EU in a “very unpleasant situation.”

Between 2015 and 2024, the UAE ordered more than €21 billion worth of French weaponry, putting it among the top buyers of French arms, according to a government report published earlier this year.

A UAE government official told POLITICO that Abu Dhabi “categorically rejects any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war,” adding that it “condemns atrocities committed by both” sides.

“There is no substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” the official said.

Sudan remains engulfed in a brutal war between the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused by rights organisations and UN experts of ethnic massacres, mass displacement and widespread sexual violence. The UN characterises the humanitarian crisis as one of the world’s worst, with tens of thousands killed since 2023 and around 25 million people facing extreme hunger.

Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused by the UN and human rights groups of grave abuses, including mass killings, torture and sexual violence.

RSF fighters were accused of massacring members of the Masalit ethnic group in Darfur last year, killing thousands and forcing tens of thousands to flee, while SAF airstrikes have been blamed for civilian casualties in densely populated urban areas.

By Jeyhun Aghazada