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Sudan: U.S. seeks anti-terror cooperation
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| Protesters in Khartoum denounce the recent U.S. strikes, calling them diversions from Clinton's domestic troubles | |
Web posted at: 12:34 p.m. EDT (1634 GMT)
In this story:
- Bin Laden connection disputed
- Sudanese leaders see Monica motive
- Pakistan to protest stray missile
- Pictures of embassy bomb suspects published
- Related stories and sites
KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- Sudan's president said Monday that the United States has sought cooperation from Sudanese security officials and assured him that last week's attack on a Khartoum factory was aimed at terrorism, not at his government.
Speaking at his first news conference since Thursday's strike on a Khartoum factory that U.S. officials said manufactured chemical weapons ingredients, President Omar Hassan el-Bashir also said his nation would protest through diplomatic, not military, means.
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Sudan, which has urged the U.N. Security Council to address the issue, insists the destroyed facility was a pharmaceutical plant that made only medicines.
El-Bashir said the U.S. government had communicated with Sudan through a third party, which he would not name, to say that his country was "not targeted in the attack, but terrorism."
"They also said that they wanted cooperation between the Sudanese and the American security apparatus," he said, adding that U.S. officials had refused a similar request Sudan made previously on that issue.
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U.S. officials have not said anything publicly about renewing cooperation with Sudan, which they accuse of sponsoring terrorism. American officials have not made clear if they are accusing Sudan of being linked to the targeted factory.
President Clinton tied the factory to Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire suspected by the United States of masterminding the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 257 people.
Bin Laden connection disputed
A second U.S. attack was carried out Thursday against bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan.
But el-Bashir said that bin Laden "has no shares at all in the factory," adding bin Laden left Sudan before the factory was opened in 1996. Bin Laden lived in Sudan in the early 1990s but was forced out under Western pressure in 1995.
El-Bashir said Clinton based the attack on wrong information supplied by dissidents who have opposed his Islamic rule since he came to power in a coup in 1989.
"The American agencies have counted on erroneous information from some groups... in return for giving them money," he said, calling the opposition groups "traitors and agents working against their homeland."
Sudanese leaders see Monica motive
He also said the attack was a crusade against Islam, carried out "to cover up for the Monica scandal," a reference to Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
That view is shared by the speaker of Sudan's parliament, who is also a respected religious leader. Hassan al-Turabi, noting that Sudanese are dark-skinned Muslims, used an American racial slur to describe Clinton's motive as racial hatred.
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| al-Turabi | |
"You allow a single person simply to divert your attention from his own affair, simply to go and attack these niggers in the Southern Hemisphere or fundamentalist Muslims like that," he told CNN. "It's foolish actually." (
493 K/ 12 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
Despite el-Bashir's criticism of the Clinton administration, the Sudanese president insisted private U.S. enterprises were not threatened in his country.
"We have no animosity toward the American people and non-government agencies," he said.
In other developments on Monday:
- Sudan's Foreign Minister said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter could lead a U.S. team to inspect the destroyed Khartoum factory. "A neutral respected person like ex-President Carter could lead an investigation team and come and see whether this factory is really producing chemicals or not," Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Baghdad before concluding a visit to Iraq, planned before the U.S. attack.
Pakistan said it is lodging a complaint with the U.N. Security Council because one of the U.S. missiles aimed at neighboring Afghanistan landed by mistake on its territory.
The discovery of an unexploded missile over the weekend supported Pakistan's claim that the United States violated its airspace, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement said.
Local officials said the missile was found in a remote area Sunday and handed over to the military the same day, three days after the attack on Afghan targets.
The Pakistan government said the missile fell near the village of Fhatingar in Pakistan's Beluchistan province, about 380 miles south of the U.S. target near Khost, Afghanistan.
"The government of Pakistan had informed us about this and we are looking into it," U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Hoagland said.
Last week, Pakistan said that a missile had mistakenly fallen in Pakistan and killed several people. The government fired its intelligence chief, Manzoor Ahmed, for passing on that false report to the prime minister.
Embassy bombing suspects Mohammad Saddiq Howaida, left, and Kahlid Salim are being held in Nairobi Pictures of two reported suspects in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya were published in a Nairobi newspaper. According to another newspaper, one of the men, Khalid Salim, is the person who threw a grenade seconds before the blast. There has been no confirmation by Kenyan or U.S. investigators.
The Daily Nation reported Friday that the man who hurled a grenade at security guards outside the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi immediately before the bomb blast had been identified in a police lineup. On Monday, the paper identified him as Salim and said he carried a passport from Yemen.
Salim's picture, along with another reported bombing suspect, Mohammad Saddiq Howaida, appeared Monday on the front page of another Nairobi newspaper, The East African Standard.
The Standard identified Howaida as a Palestinian deported to Nairobi from Pakistan after telling officials there that he organized the attacks on behalf of a group run by bin Laden.
Correspondents Jane Arraf, Mike Hanna, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
