2023-12-10T15:07:20+00:00
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/ The Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, on Sunday, that it had informed the UAE embassy that it had declared 15 diplomats working at the embassy as persona non grata, and demanded that they leave Sudan within 48 hours.
The report came when the Acting Chargé d’Affairs of the UAE Embassy in Sudan, Badriya Al Shehhi, was summoned and informed of the decision of the Government of Sudan.
According to what was reported by the Sudanese News Agency (SPA), the Foreign Ministry requested Al-Shehhi to convey this decision to its government.
The background of the decision, or the Emirati response, was not immediately clear, but relations between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi have witnessed tensions recently against the backdrop of the ongoing battles in Sudan.
A few days ago, in a public accusation that was the first from a Sudanese official to the Emirati authorities, Yasser Al-Atta, a member of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, said, “The UAE sends supplies to the Rapid Support Forces, through Chad’s Umm Jars Airport.”
Al-Atta, who was speaking before a group of members of the General Intelligence Service in Omdurman, added, “The information received to us from the Intelligence Service, Military Intelligence, and Sudanese diplomacy indicates that the UAE is sending supplies to Rapid Support.”
The Wall Street Journal quoted Ugandan officials as saying that on June 2, they found “arms shipments on a plane that was supposed to carry humanitarian aid from the UAE to Sudanese refugees” in Chad.
Last August, the UAE denied “supporting either side of the conflict in Sudan with weapons and ammunition,” according to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on its website.
The statement said, “The UAE does not take sides in the current conflict, and seeks to end it.”
The fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, which began last April, led to the death of more than nine thousand people, in addition to the displacement of more than 7 million internally displaced people, while more than half of the country’s population needs humanitarian aid to survive, according to World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).