Britain’s top diplomat James Cleverly skips part of Pacific tour to focus on Sudan

The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has skipped planned meetings to New Zealand and Samoa to focus on coordinating the UK’s response to the crisis in Sudan.

Cleverly had been scheduled to join the New Zealand foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, in Samoa on Wednesday for a series of trilateral meetings with the Samoan government, and then travel on with Mahuta to New Zealand.

On Thursday night, however, the UK Foreign Office said Cleverly had arrived in Wellington ahead of schedule, skipping the planned meetings in Samoa. On Friday morning, New Zealand’s Visits and Ceremonial Office said Cleverly’s New Zealand programme had been abruptly cancelled.

“We have just received news that the foreign secretary will be leaving New Zealand today after arriving ahead of schedule last night,” a spokesperson for the office said. “I do not have any further information to provide [at] this point and I am sorry to have to cancel the programme less than 24 hours out from the intended start.”

Cleverly said in a statement on Friday that “due to the ongoing situation in Sudan I’ve had to cut the visit short.” He had made the decision “with real regret,” he said.

“I’ve spoken to Foreign Minister Mahuta and told her how disappointed I am to have had to leave early and we’ve agreed we’ll reschedule as soon as we can.”

The swift cancellation of Cleverly’s Aotearoa and Samoa visits will likely come as a blow to New Zealand. The country, along with the US, UK and Australia, has been seeking to shore up relationships in the Pacific, after Chinese attempts to stake out security agreements 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.