Sweden’s acting foreign minister, Carin Jamtin, has been barred from visiting Sudan’s western region of Darfur, Swedish media reported on Wednesday.
Jamtin said she was notified of the decision on her arrival to Sudan late on Tuesday, and was told that the decision was linked to security concerns over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The governor of Darfur who stopped the visit cited that Sweden was one of the countries where the controversial caricatures were published, and that Stockholm had not issued an apology.
”This was a total surprise,” Jamtin told Swedish radio, adding that she had wanted to visit Darfur after receiving ”worrying reports” about the humanitarian and security situation there.
The visit had earlier been cleared by the Khartoum government.
Jamtin added that she believed the governor’s decision was linked to Swedish efforts in the United Nations to send UN peacekeepers to Darfur rather than to the cartoon controversy.
Jamtin was on Monday named acting foreign minister following last week’s resignation of Laila Freivalds over a row connected with Freivald’s role in shutting down a right-wing group’s website that published a controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet.
Earlier this year, several observers, including the European Union envoy to Sudan, Pekka Haavisto of Finland, had also warned that the situation in Darfur had worsened.
The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when African rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese government.
Khartoum is accused of arming Arab militias to crush the rebellion, killing more than 180 000 people and displacing more than 2-million others in what the UN has labelled a genocide. — Sapa-dpa