The contested president of Sudan’s sovereign council and leader of last October’s military coup, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, culminated on the evening of Sept. 24 an international tour of sorts that included the West for the first time since he took power. The trips were portrayed by Sudanese coup authorities as the beginning of a new chapter in their relations with Western capitals, which isolated the military junta after it seized power. But by the end of the tour, Burhan had failed to achieve any significant diplomatic breakthroughs.
Burhan’s tour included London, where he attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, then New York, where he addressed the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and finally Cairo, where he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. However, the Sudanese general only managed to be received in a courtesy meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and did not meet any Western official.
