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Regarding Bishop Robinson, who is in Canterbury taking part in events on the fringe of the conference, including a speech this evening, Dr Deng said: "For me, if he says, as he has always said, that he's a Christian, he should resign for the sake of the Church."

He added: "We want the Anglican world to remain united."

Citing Islam as one justification for his stance, Dr Deng said: "We are called infidels by the Islamic world when they hear our brothers and sisters from the Christian world talking about same-sex [relationships] to be blessed.

"Immediately it gives them the way to tell other people, these people are evil. It will give them the upper hand to kill our people."

An official statement from the bishops of Church of Sudan to the Lambeth Conference reiterated his comments. The Sudanese bishops said: "We reject homosexual practice as contrary to biblical teaching and can accept no place for it with the Episcopal Church of Sudan."

The bishops said that the approval of same-sex blessings in Canada and the consecration of Bishop Robinson in 2003 have "not only caused deep divisions within the Anglican Communion but [have] seriously harmed the Church's witness in Africa and elsewhere, opening the church to ridicule and damaging its credibility in a multi-religious environment."

Ironically, the Church of Sudan has had close relations with The Episcopal Church for many years and its bishops were even hosted alongside US bishops in Salisbury the week before the Conference opened.

The Episcopal Church defended its actions. Dr Charles Robertson, canon to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said that the Church was committed to "fruitful collaboration of ministry with the Church in Sudan".

He said: "We continue to look forward to finding ways to move forward in our own culture and context."

The problems of homosexual bishops and same-sex blessings are not the only difficulties affecting the Lambeth Conference. Organisers are facing a budget shortfall of up to £2 million. The funding crisis is so severe that even in sky-high temperatures organisers have been unable to pay for air conditioning inside the sweltering conditions of the large blue circus-style tent in which plenary sessions are being held.

An emergency meeting of the Archbishops' Council and the Church Commissioners has been called as soon as the conference ends next month. The Commissioners who have the funds to bail out the conference are not allowed by their charitable trust deeds to fund any except Church of England bishops.

Ironically, the one church that has the funds to bail out the conference is The Episcopal Church of the US. One senior source told The Times: "At the moment we just cannot pay for it."