(Khartoum) The UN envoy to Sudan, the German Volker Perthes, has been declared persona non grata by the country’s government, the Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.
“The Government of the Republic of Sudan has notified the Secretary General of the United Nations that it has declared Mr. Volker Perthes […] persona non grata as of today,” the ministry said in a statement.
Mr. Perthes was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday for a series of diplomatic talks, the UN announced earlier on Twitter.
The head of the Sudanese army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, had demanded the dismissal of Mr. Perthes, accusing him of being responsible for the war which broke out in mid-April between his forces and those of the general’s paramilitaries. Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
In a letter addressed to the UN, General al-Burhane notably accused Mr. Perthes of having “concealed” in his reports the explosive situation in Khartoum before the outbreak of hostilities. Without these “lies”, General “Daglo would not have launched his military operations”, he argued.
Following which, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres affirmed “his full confidence” in his envoy. But at the beginning of June, the Security Council had only extended for six months the United Nations Integrated Mission for Transition Assistance in Sudan (Minuats, Unitams in English), of which Mr. Perthes is the head.
Created in June 2020 to support the democratic transition in Sudan after the fall of Omar el-Bashir the previous year, Minuats had since been renewed each year for one year.