Bashir fires foreign minister

KHARTOUM: President Omar Al Bashir on Thursday ired Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, state media reported, after he said that Sudanese diplomats abroad had been unpaid for months.

In a speech to lawmakers on wednesday, Ghandour, who negotiated the lifting of decades-old sanctions with Washington in October 2017, said his ministry had also been unable to pay rents for several Sudanese diplomatic missions due to a government cash shortfall.

“President Omar Al Bashir issued this evening a decree sacking Professor Ibrahim Ghandour from his post of minister of foreign affairs,” the oficial Suna news agency reported quoting the decree.

“For months Sudanese diplomats have not received salaries and there is also a delay in paying rent for diplomatic missions,” Ghandour told lawmakers, without specifying which ones.

“The situation has now turned dangerous, which is why I am talking about it publicly,” he said.

Ghandour said there was a feeling among some government oficials that paying wages to diplomats and rent for diplomatic missions were not a priority.

“Some ambassadors and diplomats want to return to Khartoum now because of the dificulties faced by them and their families,” he said.

Ghandour, 65, told reporters on Wednesday that his ministry’s annual budget was about $69 million, while the wages of diplomats and rents of missions amounted to $30 million.

Previously a professor at University of Khartoum, Ghandour became a top aide to Bashir in December 2013 and in June 2015 was appointed as foreign minister — a post he held until Thursday.