KHARTOUM, 24 August 2007 — Sudan expelled the top Canadian diplomat and the European Commission envoy from the country for what was described as “meddling in its affairs,” the state news agency reported yesterday.

The two diplomats were summoned separately on Wednesday to the Foreign Ministry, which declared each a “persona non grata,” and handed expulsion notes, Ali Al Sadeq, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency.

It was not immediately clear why the two were being expelled but many Western countries have been critical of the Sudanese government’s role in the country’s war-torn Darfur region. Sadeq said the two diplomats were “involved in activities that constitute an intervention into the internal affairs of the Sudan, a matter that contradict their diplomatic duties and mission.”

It was unclear whether the diplomatic jargon inferred for example, spying activities, as has been the case in the past, or meant that the Sudanese felt the two or their countries had been raising embarrassing issues.

The spokesman also said that the Foreign Ministry informed both diplomats that “Sudan is keen to maintain the relation of cooperation linking it with the European Commission and with Canada.” “This incident should not hamper the relations between the Sudan and both the EC and Canada,” Sadeq said.

The Canadian Embassy in Khartoum and the European Commission office declined to immediately respond to phone call queries by The Associated Press. The Foreign Ministry, as is customary, did not identify the diplomats by name, but a Foreign Ministry’s diplomatic listing records Kent Degerfelt as EU head of mission here and Alan Bones as Canadian charge d’affaires.

More than 200,000 people have died in Sudan’s embattled Darfur region since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government in 2003, accusing it of discrimination. Khartoum is accused of retaliating by unleashing Janjaweed militias, which are blamed for the worst atrocities against civilians in a conflict that has displaced more than 2.5 million people.

Meanwhile, a southern official said that south Sudan will empower tribal chiefs to judge thousands of untried prisoners filling the semi-autonomous region’s overcrowded jails in the absence of new laws.

“We have decided that special courts be set up in every state manned by chiefs,” Chief Justice John Wuol Makek told Reuters late on Wednesday. “Within six months all these remand cases should be cleared,” he added.

He said there were thousands of prisoners sitting in jails across the region, some for 5 to 10 years. The chiefs would use tribal law to deal with lower-level crimes. South Sudan has suffered decades of civil war since 1955 with only a short respite. Makek said this created a violent mentality in the south. Many of those jailed were involved in intertribal killings.

Since a January 2005 peace deal, Makek said numbers of prisoners had grown because of a lack of manpower in the courts system and confusion over what legislation to use. The UN rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, Sima Samar, in her last visit criticized southern prisons as overcrowded and sub-standard, with children incarcerated with adults.

Under the peace deal, the mainly Christian and animist south formed its own legal system to distinguish itself from the Muslim north which uses laws based on Islamic Shariah.

But Makek said Parliament had been too slow to pass laws — only four have made it through and are not yet enacted — leaving judges in a quandary over what laws to use.

Judges in formerly rebel-controlled areas used basic laws created by the insurgents, while those in previously northern-controlled garrison towns in the south reverted to national laws based on Shariah.