The Sudanese government has declared the UN envoy to the country, Volker Perthes, persona non grata, accusing him for several weeks of being responsible for the ongoing war.
In a recent development, the United Nations (UN) confirmed that the German envoy was present in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, on Thursday to engage in a series of diplomatic discussions.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, the head of the Sudanese army, had made a demand for the senior diplomat’s removal, holding him responsible for the outbreak of war on April 15th. The conflict involved the Sudanese troops and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
The clash occurred on the same day that the two rival generals were scheduled to meet for negotiations. The objective of the talks was to facilitate the integration of the RSF into the regular army, a demand that the UN had been advocating for several weeks.
Over the course of several months, thousands of individuals supporting the army and the Islamists had been staging demonstrations against the UN envoy, citing alleged foreign “interference” in their affairs.
Pro-democracy activists have consistently accused General Burhane of being influenced by the Islamists associated with the regime of Omar al-Bashir, which ruled from 1989 to 2019.
