US Lawmakers Say Biden Admin Has Addressed Their Concern About Arms Sale to UAE
The Biden administration said this week it has received assurances that the United Arab Emirates has ended weapons transfers to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia group, meeting a key demand of U.S. lawmakers who had threatened to oppose an arms sale to the UAE over its RSF support.
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The administration intends to monitor the UAE’s compliance with those assurances and give Congress an update on the matter by Jan. 17, said Brett McGurk, deputy assistant to the president and White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. McGurk made his comments in a Dec. 18 letter to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who publicly released the document Dec. 19.
Van Hollen and Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., told President Joe Biden in early December that they would hold off on trying to derail a $1.2 billion arms sale to the UAE if he could assure them that the UAE has stopped providing weapons to the RSF, which is fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (see 2412040050). The two lawmakers introduced a joint resolution of disapproval last month to block the arms sale, saying the UAE's support for the RSF was perpetuating Sudan’s civil war (see 2411220003).
In response to the McGurk letter, Van Hollen said, “I appreciate the administration’s willingness to work with us to obtain such assurances from the UAE and to create an accountability mechanism to monitor its compliance with those commitments. We will closely review their assessment of the UAE’s compliance with the assurances they’ve provided. Should the UAE fail to live up to these assurances, we retain the right to refile our joint resolution of disapproval to block the sale in the next Congress.”
Jacobs said that "without the UAE’s support, the RSF will not have the same capabilities to wage this war -- making negotiation and a ceasefire a much likelier alternative."