THE United States has condemned the Sudanese Government’s decision to expel the head of the United Nations mission to the country and said that international action was needed to contain the worsening conflict. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, described as “unfortunate in the extreme” the move to order Jan Pronk, the Dutch head, to leave. The Sudanese Government said that it had expelled him for saying that its army had recently suffered defeats against rebels in Darfur. Khartoum, which was already at loggerheads with the international community over moves to send a 22,000-strong UN force to Darfur, was infuriated by comments made by Mr Pronk on his blog, janpronk.nl. A “somewhat bemused” Mr Pronk has been recalled to New York for talks with Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, and will not return to Sudan.
The decision to order Mr Pronk out of the country raises the stakes sharply in the long-running dispute with the world body over the crisis in the vast western province, where an estimated 200,000 have died and more than two million have been driven from their homes in 3Å“ years of government-supported mayhem.