The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has formally removed Sudan Airways (SD, Khartoum) and other Sudanese government-owned and linked companies from its Specially Designated Nationals List following Washington's decision last week to revoke economic sanctions with respect to Sudan and the Government of Sudan under Executive Orders 13067 and 13412.
The North African state has been under extensive US economic sanctions since 1997 given Washington's suspicions that Omar al Basheer's regime had both supported and fomented international terrorism as well as internal strife in the Darfur region.
The US State Department said last week's decision to remove the embargo came after a focused, 16-month diplomatic effort to make progress with Sudan in the aforementioned areas of concern.
For its part, the Sudanese government has welcomed the move while highlighting the damage the twenty-year blockade on trade has done to the country's economy and infrastructure. Sudan’s Minister of Transport Makkawi Mohammed Awad told the official SUNA news agency that among his department's most pressing issues post-sanctions would be to recover aircraft spare parts confiscated in 1997.
“There was money and spare parts for airlines and railways confiscated during the sanctions era that the ministry will seek to recover after the sanctions are lifted," he said.
Sudan Airways will now seek to directly engage both Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and Boeing (BOE, Washington National) in the procurement of additional spare parts as well as training for its flight and maintenance crews.
For its part, Sudan Airways operates one A320-200, one B737-500, two Fokker 50s, and two CRJ200s wet-leased from Nova Airways (NOV, Khartoum). Until recently, it was in the process of returning A300B4-622R ST-ATB (msn 666) to service following several years of storage. Although a test flight was executed in September, it is unknown if the aircraft has indeed been redeployed into commercial use.
