UNITED NATIONS, Sept 4: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Tuesday named Ashraf Qazi as his special envoy to Sudan, replacing Jan Pronk who has been expelled from the country for criticising the Sudanese army.

Mr Qazi who is UN secretary-general’s special envoy to Iraq was in Baghdad when Mr Ban who is visiting Sudan made the announcement at a press conference with Sudanese First Vice-President Salva Kiir.

Mr Ban’s visit comes just weeks after the UN Security Council authorised a hybrid force, which will have some 26,000 peacekeepers at full deployment, to quell the violence in Darfur where at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million others forced to leave their homes since 2003 because of fighting between rebel groups, Sudanese government forces and allied Janjaweed militias.

“I want to see for myself the plight of those we seek to help, and the conditions under which our peacekeepers in Darfur will operate,” Mr Ban told an audience of civil society representatives upon arriving in Khartoum.