UN envoy no longer welcome in Sudan as both sides agree to brief cease-fire
Global News The United Nations envoy to Sudan, a key mediator in the country’s brutal conflict, is no longer welcome in the African country, Sudanese authorities say, as the warring sides agreed to a new 24-hour cease-fire.
A terse statement issued by Sudan’s Foreign Ministry late Thursday comes just weeks after the head of the country’s military, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, demanded in a letter to envoy Volker Perthes that he should be removed from his post.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been notified that Perthes has been formally declared “persona non grata,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Since Apr. 15, Sudan’s military, headed by Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have been locked in a violent power struggle that has killed more than 860 civilians, according to Sudan’s Doctors’ Syndicate which tracks civilian casualties. The actual death tally is likely to be much higher.
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Later Friday, the military and the RSF agreed to a new 24-hour cease-fire set to start Saturday at 6 a.m. Sudan time, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. said in a joint statement published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The daylong truce, brokered by Washington and Riyadh, will be the conflict’s eighth cease-fire deal. All past agreements have foundered.
