Sudan has ordered two senior UN officials to leave, a UN spokesman said on Thursday, after a recent spike in tensions between Khartoum and the peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator Ali Zaatari and UN Development Program country director Yvonne Helle have been asked to leave, said a UN staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the body has protested the expulsions.
“The UN has filed a protest with the government of Sudan following their decision to request the departure of two senior UN officials from the country,” Dujarric told reporters.
He said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “condemns” the move and urged Sudan to “immediately” reverse the decision and cooperate with UN entities in the country.
“The sanctioning of United Nations personnel sent to Sudan to carry out their duties in accordance with the United Nations Charter is unacceptable,” Dujarric added.
It was unclear why the UN officials were asked to leave, or when they would have to exit the country. The UN staffer declined to provide further details.
The UN Development Program and the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
Zaatari, a Jordanian national, had been in Sudan for nearly two years.
Helle, who is from the Netherlands, had spent about a year heading the program’s office in the country.
The expulsions come as the Sudanese government is locked in a dispute with the hybrid UN-African Union Mission in Darfur.
Ties between the two have frayed over Khartoum’s anger at the mission’s attempts to investigate a report that government troops raped 200 women and girls in a village in the war-torn western region on Oct. 31.
Sudan demanded that the mission form an “exit strategy” from Darfur — where it has been deployed since 2007 — and ordered it to close down a human rights office in Khartoum last month.
Zaatari and Helle’s expulsion are the latest in a string of incidents with foreign aid and humanitarian workers in Sudan.
In April, the government told the US head of the UN Population Fund in Sudan to leave for “interfering” in internal affairs.
The UN and non-governmental organizations provide aid to some of the areas of Sudan worst affected by the conflicts wracking its peripheries.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not