Foreign secretary cancelled plans in Samoa and New Zealand due to crisis in Sudan, his office said
in the region. The UK Foreign Office had previously said the aim of the joint New Zealand-UK trip was to strengthen partnerships with Pacific Island countries and to “announce new commitments to show the UK’s support for a free and open Pacific”.
The UK Foreign Office said in its statement on Wednesday that the Samoa leg had been cancelled due to “the situation in Sudan”, and skipping on to New Zealand, “where the British have a larger and better equipped High Commission, with more reliable, stable and secure comms, [would allow] him to more easily coordinate the UK’s response to events in the African state”.
In the early hours of Friday morning New Zealand time, Cleverly appeared focused on the Sudan crisis, tweeting that he had “held discussions with international partners on working collectively to resolve this conflict”. Later that morning, he tweeted that he had conducted a “productive call with [French foreign affairs minister] Catherine Colonna on our mutual concern for French and British citizens in Sudan”.
Nearly 300 people have been killed, thousands more injured and up to 20,000 displaced to Chad since fighting erupted in Sudan on Saturday. The clashes, which began as a power struggle between rival military factions, have derailed a shift to civilian rule and raised fears of a long, brutal civil war.
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