Washington: According to the Associated Press, the Wagner private military company's presence in Sudan and Libya has been "at the top of every meeting" between American and Egyptian officials as part of the Biden administration's efforts to persuade African countries to expel the company.
During recent trips to Egypt and Libya, CIA Director William Burns focused on the group, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi about Wagner during a trip to Cairo last month, according to the news agency.
An Egyptian senior government official claimed that Wagner "obsesses [the American officials]." "It comes first in every meeting,"
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The Biden administration even went so far as to use Cairo to relay messages to Moscow rather than using direct channels, making Egypt a crucial conduit for American policy. The report claims that the Egyptians communicated Washington's displeasure with Wagner to their Sudanese and Libyan counterparts.
According to a Sudanese official, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan was urged by Abbas Kamel, the director of Egypt's intelligence agency, to address Wagner's "use of Sudan as a base" for operations in Central Africa. According to the report, Burns personally travelled to Libya to communicate with the competing governments there and discussed Wagner with Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA).
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The US reportedly demanded that Wagner fighters be removed from their posts guarding Libyan oil facilities, while Egypt reportedly asked Haftar not to station Wagner soldiers close to its borders.
Since its establishment in 2014, Wagner has worked primarily as a security contractor in the Middle East and Africa. Although Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has acknowledged that his forces participated in the conflict in Libya, the precise details of its deployments are kept a secret. When questioned by American journalists last year, he denied any involvement in Sudan, claiming that he was personally donating humanitarian aid to the war-torn nation and that he was "not aware of any evidence that the Wagner Group exists."
He asked RT last month, "Who organised wars and revolutions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mozambique, Central Africa, and so on?" Later, some of these nations consulted the Wagner PMC, which swiftly put an end to these wars.
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Following a string of Wagner Group victories over the Ukrainian military in Donbass, the US branded the Wagner Group a "transnational criminal organisation" last month.
Despite what appears to be Washington's "obsession" with the organisation, the AP reported that "there is no evidence yet that the Biden administration's pressure has yielded results in either Sudan or Libya."