The ministers acknowledged that the British ambassador to Sudan was not in the country due to the outbreak of armed conflict, as a result of which thousands of British citizens were stranded.
Ministers on Monday confirmed reports that British Ambassador to Sudan Giles Lever and his deputy were out of the country when violence erupted in Khartoum.
Officials are believed to have been surprised when fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Period.
A spokesman for the prime minister confirmed: “I think it was around the time of Ramadan when they were out of the country at the time.
“There were still very high-ranking officials in the country, and both those in the country and the ambassador were working around the clock to support the effort.”
Time The newspaper reported that ahead of Eid on April 21, a Muslim holiday that marks the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan, officials mistakenly assumed violence was unlikely.
Mr Lever, who is staying in London, said that mail that he went on a scheduled Easter break that was “approved by my boss” and “couldn’t come back” because of the fight. “It is physically impossible to work or even return from there,” he said, adding that he had placed “a very high-ranking diplomat” in charge.
Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell previously confirmed the report after being questioned by MPs.
SNP MP Martin Doherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) asked the Minister: “Due to a regrettable lack of information on the ground, the British Ambassador to Sudan appears to have decided to take a leave of absence. Can he confirm this? And can he confirm, is it true, that who was in charge on the spot?
Mr Mitchell replied: “The Ambassador has the right to return to the UK either for diplomatic reasons or on leave, as needed.
“What I can tell him is that the second-in-command at the embassy in Khartoum, who was the director of development there, was indeed in office when the disaster happened.”
Labor MP Tanmanjit Singh Dhesi (Slough) continued to seek information on the matter, asking if it was true that the ambassador and his deputy left on 14 April.
Mr. Mitchell added: “In terms of staffing, the ambassador was actually out of the country, and the deputy chief of mission was not the second most senior person in the embassy, it was the director of development there.”
The rapid outbreak of hostilities has forced the Foreign Office to help Sudan’s estimated 4,000 British passport holders leave the country as heavy fighting continues around the capital Khartoum and food and water supplies dwindle.
Embassy staff and their families were evacuated from the capital on Sunday, leaving the British without support in the country.
Officials have tried to play down the parallels between the Sudanese crisis and the fall of Kabul in 2021, when the Taliban’s rapid advance prompted the UK and its allies to rush to organize an arbitrary evacuation from Afghanistan.
In this case, both then-Secretary of State Dominic Raab and the permanent Under Secretary of State for the State Department were on vacation and did not shorten their vacation as the crisis developed.
Source: I News
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