Volker Perthes, the UN representative in sudan, was deemed persona non grata on Thursday by the Sudanese government, which has been holding him accountable for the ongoing conflict for weeks.
The German representative was in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, on Thursday for a series of diplomatic discussions, according to a previous UN announcement.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, the commander of the Sudanese army, demanded the removal of the senior diplomat, blaming him for the conflict that erupted on April 15 between his forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
On the day that the two opposing generals were scheduled to meet for negotiations to integrate the RSF into the regular army, as the UN had been asking for weeks, combat broke out.
Thousands of supporters of the army and Islamists have been protesting against the UN envoy and purported foreign “intervention” for several months.
General Burhane has long been accused by pro-democracy campaigners of being duped by the Islamists in Omar al-Bashir’s regime (1989-2019).
