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Sudan denies U.S. nerve gas allegations
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| Ruins of the bombed plant | |
In this story:
August 25, 1998Web posted at: 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT)
KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- Sudan on Tuesday denied U.S. claims that a pharmaceutical plant destroyed by U.S. missiles last week had been producing a precursor element that can be used for the production of chemical weapons.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN that a soil sample "obtained by clandestine means" from the Shifa Pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum contained a chemical that was "one step away" from the deadly nerve gas VX.
Sudan insists the plant was used only to manufacture medicine and again called for an international investigation into the attack.
"How can we believe that they have taken the soil from here? They can take it from anywhere in the world and say that this is the sand taken from the factory in Shifa," said Mohammed al-Hassan al-Amin, political secretary of Sudan's National Congress, the sole political organization in the country.
| ALSO: |
| Pakistanis puzzle how to tackle unexploded missile |
"There's no way to take a sample of soil from this factory, according to the construction of this factory," said Alamaddin al-Shibli, export manager at the plant, bombed in a U.S. missile attack last Thursday.
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"It's either concrete or cement or carpet," he added.
A U.S. intelligence source said the material apparently got into the soil immediately outside the plant (but still on the plant property) "either through airborne emissions or spillage from the manufacturing process."
While defending the destruction of the plant, the U.S. administration nevertheless conceded that the facility probably also manufactured medicines.
"That facility very well may have been producing pharmaceuticals," State Department spokesman James Foley said.
Taliban won't talk to United States
Thursday's U.S. missile attacks also targeted alleged positions of Osama Bin Laden, the exiled Saudi Islamic militant leader Washington accuses of sponsoring and planning terrorist operations.
On Tuesday, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service reported that the leader of Afghanistan's Islamic Taliban movement had rebuffed an American approach for talks because of the U.S. strike.
While the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar angrily told Bin Laden earlier this week to stop making threats against the United States from Afghan soil, the Afghan Islamic Press news agency quoted Mullah Omar as saying he had nothing to talk about with Washington, after 21 people were killed in the attack.
"We told the Americans, 'What's left for talks now? Everything was finished after the rocket attacks,'" Omar told the AIP in an interview on Monday night from his headquarters in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
U.S. Embassy official Richard Hoagland said in Islamabad, Pakistan, that the United States wanted to reopen dialogue with the Taliban.
"We are of course interested in talking to the Taliban about Bin Laden and other international terrorist threats," Hoagland said.
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Pakistani troops defuse missile
Troops cordoned off a patch of western Pakistani desert Tuesday as experts worked to defuse a U.S. Tomahawk missile that was meant for neighboring Afghanistan.
Mir Hakim Baloch, the provincial Cabinet minister in charge of security, said his government first learned of the missile Sunday from a truck driver who had seen it in Shatinger, a remote area some 600 kilometers (375 miles) south of the U.S. target near Khost, Afghanistan.
Bomb disposal teams were brought in, Baloch said, and residents in a wide area were evacuated and journalists barred from the spot.
