Sudan’s Bashir Hosts South Sudan Talks to End War

From left to right, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, pose for a picture before a meeting in Khartoum on June 25, 2018. COURTESY PHOTO
From left to right, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, pose for a picture before a meeting in Khartoum on June 25, 2018. COURTESY PHOTO
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Sudan’s Bashir Hosts South Sudan Talks to End War

From left to right, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, pose for a picture before a meeting in Khartoum on June 25, 2018. COURTESY PHOTO
From left to right, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, pose for a picture before a meeting in Khartoum on June 25, 2018. COURTESY PHOTO

South Sudan President Salva Kiir expressed on Monday hopes that the new round of talks in Khartoum with his archfoe Riek Machar in Khartoum will bring an “immediate end” to the devastating war in their country, AFP reported.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir hosted the two rivals in the presence of Ugandan President Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The two met at the Khartoum conference center for a second round of talks hoping to end a bloody four-year civil war ravaging southern Sudan.

AFP pointed out that leaders in East Africa are making new efforts to achieve peace in southern Sudan, where warring factions have a deadline to reach a solution in order to avoid United Nations sanctions.

The first round of talks, sponsored by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, failed to achieve any breakthrough.

"I have come to really bring this unnecessary war in our country to an immediate end, and I hope that Doctor Riek Machar is ready to see my point," Kiir said, as the meeting got underway in the presence of Bashir and Museveni.

Machar too raised hopes that peace was possible in South Sudan, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly four million displaced since fighting erupted in December 2013.

"There is a chance for peace and there is a way to achieve peace," Machar said, in his first remarks to journalists in more than two years.

The two leaders shook hands and later stood alongside Bashir and Museveni with their hands raised as the meeting commenced, an AFP correspondent said.

"As the people of South Sudan, not the president alone, but as the people of South Sudan, we are saying enough is enough," South Sudanese government spokesman Michael Makuei said Friday.



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.