Expelled UN envoy not welcome back in Sudan – FM
Oct 26, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan will not have any further dealings with expelled UN envoy Jan Pronk, regardless of what the United Nations may decide about his future, a senior official said Thursday.
“The decision to expel Jan Pronk is irrevocable because of positions he has taken that are incompatible with his mission in Sudan,” foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadek told journalists.
“It is a decision of state and of the government that is not concerned with what the United Nations decides.”
Pronk, 66, was ordered out of Sudan at the weekend after reporting on his personal weblog that the Sudanese army had suffered major losses in fighting against rebels in the strife-torn Darfur region.
The Sudanese military had accused him of “waging psychological warfare on the armed forces by propagating erroneous information.”
Pronk, who received support on Tuesday from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said the reports he had mentioned on his website had also been published in Sudanese newspapers.
Sudanese Minister Lam Akol has written to Annan demanding that he appoint a new envoy for Sudan.
Pronk has long been a thorn in the side of the Khartoum government. He has openly called Sudan a “police state” and said refugees in Darfur were victims of “Arabic racism”.
At least 200,000 people have died as a result of fighting, famine and disease in Darfur, and more than two million have fled their homes since rebels launched an uprising in early 2003, prompting a scorched earth response from the military and its Janjaweed militia allies.
(AFP)