UPDATES WITH OPPOSITION’S STATEMENT</p> <p>By Mohammed Amin</p> <p>KHARTOUM, Sudan (AA) – The Sudanese military council and the Change and Freedom opposition alliance failed to make progress after three days of negotiations in talks on transitional arrangements.</p> <p>Talks began on arrangements for a transitional period after President Omer Al-Bashir was ousted earlier this month.</p> <p>Military spokesman Shams Aldin Kabashi told a news conference that both sides would continue talks in upcoming days despite disagreement on the percentage of seats in the transitional council.</p> <p>“The opposition has presented a proposal of a composition that contains eight seats for the civilians and seven for the military, but we as a military council asked for seven seats for the military and three for civilians,” Kabashi said.</p> <p>“We made it clear that the sovereignty of the country is supposed to be in the hands of the military and entire Cabinet can be a civilian authority, but the opposition has changed their mind and we are waiting for them to come up with a detailed proposal to the next meeting,” he added.</p> <p>There has been some progress in the talks as Kabashi said both sides agreed main roads leading to a square in front of army headquarters will be opened. The roads have been used by demonstrators to organize sit-ins.</p> <p>The opposition alliance, for its part, said the talks with the military council was “deadlocked” over the handing over of the power in Sudan to the civilians.</p> <p>“So far, we failed to agree with the military council on the percentage of representation in the transitional council, Sidig Youssef, a leading member in the opposition alliance, told a news conference in the capital Khartoum.</p> <p>“However, we submitted a proposal including the building-up of the structure and institutions of the transitional period,” he added.</p> <p>Confirming the military council on the road agreement, Youssef said: “We accepted to open the part of the railway to ease the delivery of the food and cargo to some parts of our country, especially Darfur.</p> <p>“But that does not mean that we will revoke the sit-in. We will continue protesting until achieving all our demands,” he emphasized.
