UN envoy to leave Sudan after expulsion order
Oct 23, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The UN’s top envoy in Sudan is due to leave the country after his comments on Darfur earned him an expulsion order, sending relations between Khartoum and the world body into a nosedive.
The Sudanese foreign ministry announced Sunday it was giving UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative Jan Pronk three days to leave, accusing him of overstepping his mandate.
Pronk acknowledged in a statement Monday that he had been summoned by the authorities and asked to leave Sudan. He said he would fly to New York Monday “for consultations” with Annan, two days ahead of the deadline.
The envoy said he had a meeting Sunday with State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti, who gave him a letter addressed to Annan and informing him that the government considers the envoy’s mission in Sudan “terminated”.
The outspoken 66-year-old Dutch official prompted the ire of Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir’s regime by criticising its handling of the crisis in Darfur and pushing for the deployment of UN peacekeepers there.
In an October 14 entry on his personal Internet blog, he criticised the performance of Sudan’s army against Darfur rebels, claimed that morale among the troops was low, and linked the military to the infamous Janjaweed militia.
“The use of militia with ties with the Janjaweed recalls the events in 2003 and 2004,” wrote Pronk, who has been Annan’s special representative for Sudan since 2004.
“During that period of the conflict, systematic militia attacks, supported or at least allowed by the SAF (army), led to atrocious crimes,” he said.
The military responded by accusing Pronk of “waging psychological warfare on the armed forces by propagating erroneous information that cast doubts about the capability of the armed forces in maintaining security and defending the country”.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on August 31 calling for the deployment of up to 20,000 peacekeepers to replace an embattled African Union contingent that has failed to restore peace and stability in Darfur.
At least 200,000 people have died as a result of fighting, famine and disease, and more than two million fled their homes since rebels launched an uprising in Darfur in early 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the military and its militia allies.
Beshir’s regime has consistently rejected the deployment of UN forces, charging that the plan was part of a US-engineered plot to invade his country and plunder its resources.
Diplomats and experts see a deployment as crucial to the implementation of an ailing peace deal signed in May and argue that regime officials fear a UN presence would expose them to war crimes prosecutions.
The European Union voiced its deep concern at Khartoum’s decision to expel Pronk and stressed that “the United Nations plays a key role which must be reinforced”.
“The United Nations is not only about a security element being discussed — the eventual peacekeeping force — but it allows hundreds of millions of Sudanese to stay alive,” said Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.
The UN runs the world’s largest humanitarian operation in Sudan and the vast majority of the population of Darfur — a territory roughly the size of France — relies on aid.
The United Nations also has thousands of peacekeepers deployed in the south of Sudan, where officials Sunday criticised the decision to expel Pronk, casting further doubt on the future of the country’s unity government.
“It is a wrong decision and it is taking Sudan more and more to the brink of confrontation with the international community,” said Yasser Arman, the spokesman for the southern Sudanese government.
A peace agreement was signed in January 2005 between Khartoum and the former southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who now sit in a national unity government with Beshir’s party.
The deal ended more than two decades of deadly civil unrest but the cabinet alliance has been fragile and was further shaken in recent weeks by the SPLM’s support for a UN deployment in Darfur.
(AFP)