In first, Israeli foreign minister meets Sudan's Burhan in Khartoum

Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Thursday hosted Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, in the first official visit by a top Israeli diplomat to Khartoum, Sudanese authorities said.

Sudan in January 2021 formally agreed to normalize relations with Israel in a quid pro quo for the United States removing it from its list of "state sponsors of terrorism," but ties have yet to be formalized.

Cohen, then Israel's intelligence minister, led that same month the first official delegation to Sudan.

In 2020 the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco all normalized relations with Israel as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords, vehemently criticized by the Palestinians.

In Khartoum on Thursday, Burhan and Cohen discussed "ways to establish fruitful relations" between the two countries and "prospects of cooperation" in security, agriculture, energy, health, water and education, according to a statement by Sudan's sovereign council.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said Cohen was on a "historic diplomatic trip" and would deliver a statement later on Thursday.

Sudan, an Arab League member, had for decades maintained a rigid anti-Israel stance under longtime autocratic president Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019 following mass protests against his rule.

Khartoum was removed from the US blacklist in December 2020 after 27 years of crippling sanctions which strangled Sudan's economy under Bashir.

In January 2021, Sudan signed a declaration paving the way to normalizing ties with Israel, and in April that year, it approved a bill abolishing a 1958 boycott of the country.

Relations were however stymied as political turmoil in Sudan deepened following an October 2021 military coup led by Burhan, derailing the post-Bashir transition to civilian rule.

Sudan's agreement to normalize relations with Israel upended a longstanding policy after the 1967 Six-Day War between Arab countries and Israel that saw Israel occupy swathes of territory.

Arab leaders gathered in Khartoum after the defeat, announcing a resolution that became known as the "three nos": no peace, no recognition and no negotiations with Israel.

Burhan has over the years defended the normalization with Israel, saying in a December 2021 interview that it was "essential for Sudan to return to the international community."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to power late last year at the head of the most right-wing government in the country's history, has made broadening Israeli ties across the Arab and Muslim world a foreign policy priority.

Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his desire to see Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords.

The kingdom's top diplomat said last month it would not normalize ties with Israel in the absence of a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

On Thursday, Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno opened his majority-Muslim country's embassy in Israel, four years after the countries renewed ties following a decadeslong rupture.

Netanyahu's office in a statement called the embassy's inauguration in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv "a historic moment."