1. The first set of these articles is about the US bombing of Sudan in 1998, what reasons the US had for bombing and whether the evidence was substantial enough to warrant this action.
2. The second set of these articles is about the US's successful attempt to block a UN inquiry into the matter.

The claim comes from the 4th interview called "Chomsky Compendium Interview From Greek, Spanish and French Press"  and is as follows:
 
 

When the US attacked Sudan in 1998, destroying the facilities that produce half its pharmaceutical supplies (which it could not replenish), causing the death of unknown numbers of people, Sudan approached the Security Council, but the US refused to permit even an inquiry. --"Chomsky Compendium Interview From Greek, Spanish and French Press"

 
 
 

Note: James Risen also makes a connection that the Sudan angry at US bombings of their phar. factory, released some bomb suspects (see 1999-07-30).
This highlights a potential connection between the US making certain countries unhappy and how willing they are to co-operate with US investigations.
 
 

FAIR piece by Jeff Cohen on US bombing Sudan 1998

12.	The New York Times,  October 27, 1999, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final,  Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk,  3590 words,  QUESTION OF EVIDENCE: A special report.; To Bomb Sudan Plant, or Not: A Year Later, Debates Rankle,  By JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, Oct. 26

14.	The New York Times,  July 30, 1999, Friday, Late Edition - Final,  Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk,  570 words,  Sudan, Angry at U.S. Attack, Freed Bomb Suspects, Officials Say,  By JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, July 29

19.

The New York Times,  February 9, 1999, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final,  Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk,  1090 words,  Experts Find No Arms Chemicals at Bombed Sudan Plant,  By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON,  WASHINGTON, Feb. 8

25.	The New York Times,  September 23, 1998, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final,  Section A; Page 28; Column 1; Editorial Desk,  459 words,  Dubious Decisions on the Sudan

27.	The New York Times,  September 21, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - Final Correction Appended,  Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk,  2240 words,  DECISION TO STRIKE FACTORY IN SUDAN BASED ON SURMISE INFERRED FROM EVIDENCE,  By TIM WEINER and JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, Sept. 20

28.

The New York Times,  September 6, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final,  Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk,  1957 words,  MILITANT LEADER WAS A U.S. TARGET SINCE THE SPRING,  By JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, Sept. 5

32.	The New York Times,  August 21, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final,  Section A; Page 1; Column 3; Foreign Desk,  1009 words,  U.S. FURY ON 2 CONTINENTS: THE INTELLIGENCE; U.S. Says It Has Strong Evidence Of Threat Justifying Retaliation,  By JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, Aug. 20

33.	The New York Times,  August 9, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final,  Section 1; Page 11; Column 5; Foreign Desk,  795 words,  BOMBINGS IN EAST AFRICA: IN WASHINGTON; Rescuers and Investigators Sent by U.S. Begin to Arrive,  By JAMES RISEN,  WASHINGTON, Aug. 8

=======================================================================

2.	The Buffalo News,  August 24, 1998, Monday, CITY EDITION,  NEWS, Pg. 4A,  809 words,  ISLAMIC STATES ASK U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL TO INVESTIGATE; U.S. ATTACK ON SUDAN,  From News Wire Services

1.	Manchester Guardian Weekly,  August 25, 1999,  LE MONDE; Pg. 25,  496 words,  Sudan denies chemical weapons attack on rebels,  Mouna Naim

2.	Agence France Presse,  September 22, 1998,  International news,  306 words,  Sudan invites former US President Carter to investigate bombing,  KHARTOUM, Sept 22

3.	Agence France Presse,  September 21, 1998,  International news,  146 words,  OAU demands UN inquiry into US bombing in Sudan,  UNITED NATIONS, Sept 21

4.

Manchester Guardian Weekly,  September 6, 1998,  COMMENT; Pg. 12,  369 words,  Test for the US

5.	Agence France Presse,  September 05, 1998,  International news,  270 words,  IGAD backs Sudan request for UN inquiry into US bombing,  KHARTOUM, Sept 5

6.	Federal News Service,  SEPTEMBER 2, 1998, WEDNESDAY,  IN THE NEWS,  8549 words,  NEWS CONFERENCE WITH MAHDI IBRAHIM MAHAMMAD, SUDANESE AMBASSADOR TOPIC: U.S. BOMBING OF THE CHEMICAL PLANT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, DC

7.	The Guardian (London),  August 26, 1998,  The Guardian Features Page; Pg. 17,  426 words,  Leading article: Test the US; Sudan should have its inquiry

8.	Deutsche Presse-Agentur,  August 23, 1998, Sunday,  International News,  179 words,  Sudan calls for Security Council meeting on U.S. strikes,  New York

=======================================================================

September 14, 2001

Remembering the Last U.S. Retaliation Against Terror

Nothing will ever be the same, we're told, after the cataclysmic terrorism of 911. Yet some things seem unchanged in the media--such as the pundit clamor for retaliation against someone, somewhere, fast.

As a talk radio host in New York put it: "Bomb somebody, goddamnit!"

We've been here before, almost exactly three years ago. In the wake of terror bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, President Clinton was urged to take decisive action, and on August 20, 1998, he ordered missile attacks on two targets purportedly linked to Osama bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the bombings.

One target of operation "Infinite Reach" was bin Laden's paramilitary camp in Afghanistan. "The U.S. picked the highly accurate cruise missile for the strikes against the Afghan camp," reported CNN's military correspondent Jamie McIntrye, "because of their ability to fly with pinpoint accuracy." One of the missiles was so inaccurate it hit the wrong country, Pakistan, several hundred miles off-course.

The other target was the Al Shifa factory in Sudan, alleged by the Clinton administration to be linked to bin Laden and to be producing chemical warfare agents. The factory was destroyed and workers there were killed and maimed.

That night, Sen. John McCain appeared on five national TV programs in less than three hours to endorse the president's action. The next day, the missile attacks were supported on the editorial pages of America's leading dailies.

But soon, Western professionals who had worked at the Sudan plant began to speak credibly of the plant being just what the Sudanese government claimed it was: a civilian factory producing a major share of the pharmaceuticals for an impoverished country.

Western journalists who rushed to the scene of the U.S. missile attack found medicine, but no security features that one would expect at a military or weapons facility. Sudan's government offered journalists unfettered access to the area.

The U.S. government said that it had obtained a suspicious soil sample from near the plant nine months before the cruise attack. But as New York Times reporter James Risen noted in an exhaustive study a year after the Sudan factory had been leveled, "officials throughout the government raised doubts up to the eve of the attack about whether the United States had sufficient information linking the factory to either chemical weapons or to Mr. bin Laden."

Risen reported that intelligence analysts in the State Department were drafting an internal report saying the cruise attack on the Sudan factory had not been justified, but the report was killed by higher ups.

What's not in dispute is that Sudan government officials forced Osama bin Laden to leave their country in 1996. Or that the Al Shifa factory had been purchased by a Sudanese businessman five months before the missile attack--a fact that was unknown to the U.S. at the time it targeted the plant.

Three years after the U.S. government likely killed and injured innocent people on foreign soil in a misguided "retaliation against terrorism," media voices are again calling for a quick and forceful reprisal.

Outrage is the natural and appropriate response to the mass murder of September 11. But media should not be glibly encouraging retaliatory violence without remembering that U.S. retaliation has killed innocent civilians abroad, violated international law and done little to make us safer. 

Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR, a national media watch group based in New York -- and a panelist on Fox News Channel's News Watch.
 

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 3590 words

HEADLINE: QUESTION OF EVIDENCE: A special report.;
To Bomb Sudan Plant, or Not: A Year Later, Debates Rankle

BYLINE:  By JAMES RISEN

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 26

BODY:
In the 14 months since President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, his aides have steadfastly defended the decision. Mr. Clinton, they say, acted on evidence that left no doubt that the factory was involved with chemical weapons and linked to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile they blame for blowing up two American embassies in East Africa.

But an examination of the decision, based on interviews by The New York Times with key participants, shows that it was far more difficult than the Administration has acknowledged and that the voices of dissent were numerous. Officials throughout the Government raised doubts up to the eve of the attack about whether the United States had sufficient information linking the factory to either chemical weapons or to Mr. bin Laden, according to participants in the discussions. They said senior diplomatic and intelligence officials argued strenuously over whether any target in Sudan should be attacked.

Aides passed on their doubts to the Secretary of State, officials said. But the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, who played a pivotal role in approving the strike, said in an interview that he was not aware of any questions about the strength of the evidence before the attack.

In the aftermath, some senior officials moved to suppress internal dissent, officials said. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and a senior deputy, they said, encouraged State Department intelligence analysts to kill a report being drafted that said the bombing was not justified.

The new accounts provide the clearest explanation to date of the reasoning behind one of the most debated military actions undertaken by the Administration.

Some officials said they were told that the President and his aides approved the operation -- code-named Infinite Reach -- to show that the United States could hit back against an adversary who had bombed American embassies simultaneously in two countries.

And, some officials said, the President's chief advisers concluded that the risks of hitting the wrong target were far outweighed by the possibility that the plant was making chemical weapons for a terrorist eager to use them.

Like many decisions of this kind, the decision to bomb the plant was made under intense pressure and a sense of urgency created by intelligence showing that Mr. bin Laden was contemplating another lethal attack against the United States. "We would have been derelict in our duty not to have proceeded," Mr. Berger said.

Current and former American officials agreed to discuss the operation because, more than a year later, they continue to be plagued by doubts about whether it was justified.

They said they are still troubled by the lack of a full airing of what they view as gaps in the evidence linking the plant, called Al Shifa, to Mr. bin Laden. And they complain that the decision-making process was so secretive that Al Shifa was not vetted by many Government experts on chemical weapons sites or terrorism.

The officials brought to light several previously unknown aspects of the strike.

For example, at the pivotal meeting reviewing the targets, the Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, was said to have cautioned Mr. Clinton's top advisers that while he believed that the evidence connecting Mr. bin Laden to the factory was strong, it was less than iron clad.

He warned that the link between Mr. bin Laden and the factory could be "drawn only indirectly and by inference," according to notes taken by a participant. The plant's involvement with chemical weapons, Mr. Tenet told his colleagues, was more certain, confirmed by a soil sample from near the site that contained an ingredient of nerve gas.

Mr. Berger said he does not recall that Mr. Tenet raised any such doubts at the meeting. "I would say the director was very clear in his judgment that the plant was associated with chemical weapons," Mr. Berger said. "No one in the discussion questioned whether Al Shifa was an appropriate target."

Just a few hours before the attack, officials said, President Clinton called off a planned attack on a second target in Sudan, a tannery, after senior military officers raised questions about the risks of civilian casualties and the evidence connecting it to Mr. bin Laden. The last-minute campaign was led by Gen. Harry H. Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who enlisted other senior officers in an effort to reverse the recommendation of Mr. Clinton's civilian advisers.

On Aug. 20, 1998, American missiles hit two countries, demolishing Al Shifa and several of Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Within days, Western engineers who had worked at the Sudan factory were asserting that it was, as Sudan claimed, a working pharmaceutical plant. Reporters visiting the ruined building saw bottles of medicine but no signs of security precautions and no obvious signs of a chemical weapons manufacturing operation.

After the Attack
Albright and Top Aide Killed Critical Report
 

In the days after the strike, as criticism mounted, the Administration closed ranks, publicly asserting that the intelligence was persuasive. But the doubts persisted, particularly at the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

The bureau had written a report for Secretary Albright before the attack questioning the evidence linking Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden. Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate.

Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence.

Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak. Ms. Oakley told her aides to draft a report reflecting their skepticism, a significant step because there was a chance its findings might leak out.

Ms. Oakley told Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering that her aides were preparing a report that would sharply question the bombing.

Officials said Mr. Pickering asked whether the report contained any information omitted from the State Department's previous study. Ms. Oakley said no. In that case, Mr. Pickering said, there was no reason to raise the issue again.

"After the Al Shifa strike," Mr. Pickering said in an interview, Ms. Oakley told him her staff "was working on a draft, and we both agreed that there was nothing new in what it had to say."

"She and I discussed the idea of pursuing it further," he added, "and I said I didn't see the value in pursuing it further, and she agreed."

But other officials say that while she accepted the order to kill the report, Ms. Oakley, who retired from the State Department last month after 42 years, privately expressed frustration and concern. Other officials in the intelligence bureau have also expressed concern. Ms. Oakley declined to be quoted in this article.

"It was after the strike and I didn't see the point," Mr. Pickering said. "There was not an effort to shut off a new inquiry."

Ms. Oakley passed on Mr. Pickering's order to her analysts.

A couple of days later, Secretary Albright asked Ms. Oakley about the report and Ms. Oakley replied that there was not going to be any report, according to people familiar with the conversation.

Dr. Albright does not recall the details of her conversation with Ms. Oakley, but does remember that she was "not interested in having that debate rehashed," said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman.

Mr. Pickering said the report was being drafted solely for the use of himself and the Secretary, both of whom were already aware of the intelligence bureau's qualms.

A reconstruction of events shows that Ms. Oakley was hardly the only senior official to question the intelligence tying together Sudan, Mr. bin Laden and chemical weapons.

Before the Attack
Suspicions Dating To the Gulf War
 

Washington's suspicions about Sudan's links to chemical weapons date back to the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The C.I.A. received reports that Iraqi chemical weapons experts had visited Khartoum, prompting suspicions that Iraq was shifting some of its production of chemical weapons to Sudan.

At about the same time, Mr. bin Laden moved to Sudan after his exile from Saudi Arabia and began to invest heavily in commercial enterprises, often through joint ventures with the Government, while using Sudan as a base for his loosely knit international terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, American intelligence officials said.

The C.I.A. received intelligence reports indicating that in 1995, Mr. bin Laden won tentative approval from Sudanese leaders to begin developing chemical weapons for use against American troops in Saudi Arabia. But in 1996 the Sudanese, responding to pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia, forced Mr. bin Laden to leave, prompting him and many of his supporters to retreat to Afghanistan.

By then the United States had pulled its embassy staff out of Sudan and had closed down the C.I.A.'s Khartoum station, citing terrorist threats. The pull-out left the United States with only a limited capacity to understand events in Sudan.

American suspicions about the Al Shifa plant arose in the summer of 1997 when, intelligence officials said, an informant reported that two sites in Khartoum might be involved in chemical weapons production. The informant also mentioned a third site -- Al Shifa -- on which he had less information, but which was suspicious because it had high fences and stringent security.

In December 1997 an agent working for the C.I.A. collected a soil sample about 60 feet from Al Shifa, directly across an access road from the main entrance, according to American officials. The sample was taken from land that does not appear to have been owned by Al Shifa.

The soil was found to contain about 2.5 times the normal trace amounts of Empta, a chemical used in the production of VX nerve gas, a senior American official said.

This report prompted a heated debate among American analysts about the plant's possible links to weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

On July 24, 1998, the C.I.A. issued its first intelligence report on Al Shifa, based on the soil sample, spy satellite photographs and other intelligence. The report highlighted apparent links between Al Shifa and Mr. bin Laden, including indirect financial connections through the Military Industrial Corporation, a Government-controlled company.

But the C.I.A. analysts also suggested that additional information would be needed. One key paragraph, titled "Next Steps," called for more soil samples and additional satellite photographs. The report also raised a new question by noting that there were no longer signs of heavy security around Al Shifa.

On Aug. 4, 1998, the C.I.A. weighed in with a more ominous report that assessed the possible connection between Sudan, Osama bin Laden and his efforts to obtain chemical weapons. It mentioned Al Shifa, but the report's highlight was new intelligence indicating that Mr. bin Laden, who had announced a renewed "holy war" against the United States, had acquired chemical or nuclear materials and "might be ready" to conduct a chemical attack.

At the State Department, intelligence analysts responded with skepticism. In an Aug. 6 memorandum for senior State policy makers, Ms. Oakley's analysts argued that even with the new intelligence, the evidence linking Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden and chemical weapons was weak.

The next day, the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing more than 200 people, and the United States soon concluded that Mr. bin Laden was behind both attacks.

President Clinton and a small group of his most senior advisors -- including Mr. Berger, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Dr. Albright, Mr. Pickering and General Shelton -- quickly decided to retaliate.

On Aug. 8, the President's advisers ordered the Pentagon Joint Staff and the C.I.A. to draw up a list of sites connected to Mr. bin Laden and his organization that could be bombed.

Planning the Attack
Urgency Propelled Military Analysis
 

A group of officials, including the Counterterrorism Center at the C.I.A., prepared a list of about 20 possible targets in three countries -- Afghanistan, Sudan and another nation that officials declined to identify. It spelled out the evidence linking each target to Mr. bin Laden's organization and weighed the risks, including "collateral damage," the military term for accidentally hitting civilians. The plant at Al Shifa was on the list.

On Aug. 11, senior American intelligence officials met to discuss Al Shifa and debate whether additional soil samples were needed from the plant. On Aug. 12, after the list was winnowed down, President Clinton and key national security officials were briefed for the first time on the possible targets by General Shelton.

The next day, the C.I.A. received a report that changed the nature of the debate and the pace of planning for retaliation: New intelligence showed that Mr. bin Laden and his key lieutenants would be meeting on Aug. 20 at Khost, Afghanistan. Reports also indicated that Mr. bin Laden might be planning further attacks, possibly with chemical weapons. The Afghan camps were already among the top priority targets proposed.

Some officials said the White House seemed determined to hit Mr. bin Laden in more than one place. Richard A. Clarke, a senior National Security Council official who played a pivotal role in planning the operation on behalf of the President, later explained to a colleague that Mr. bin Laden had shown "global reach" by attacking American embassies simultaneously in two countries. The United States, he said, had to respond by attacking his network beyond its haven in Afghanistan.

In an interview, Mr. Clarke said it was the President and his principal foreign policy advisers who "obviously decided to attack in more than one place."

In the White House meeting Aug. 19 where the final recommendations were to be made for the President, officials chose to attack the Afghan camps and two sites in Sudan: Al Shifa and a tannery in Khartoum that intelligence indicated was linked to Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Berger denies that there was a significant debate about the evidence concerning Al Shifa during the meeting. Rather, he said, there were "geopolitical" questions raised about whether it was appropriate to attack Sudan when Mr. bin Laden no longer lived there. "There were a few people who felt we shouldn't go to a second country, but those questions were not based on any doubts about Al Shifa," he said.

Notes taken at the meeting, however, say Mr. Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, alluded to "gaps" in the case linking Mr. bin Laden to the factory. His agency, he said, was working to "close the intelligence gaps on this target."

Mr. Tenet said he had been careful to delineate "what we knew and didn't know, what the risks were, and what the downsides were" about Al Shifa.

Officials said General Shelton objected to attacking the tannery, both because of the potential that missiles might hit civilians and because it was not suspected of being involved in chemical weapons.

Officials recall that the debate was brought to a halt by Mr. Berger. The Administration, he said, would rightly be pilloried if the United States did not destroy Al Shifa and Mr. bin Laden initiated a chemical attack that could have been pre-empted.

A recommendation was sent to Mr. Clinton to attack the Afghan camps, Al Shifa and the tannery.

Later that day General Shelton told his colleagues among the Joint Chiefs about the planned operation, in part to gain their help in convincing the White House to drop the tannery as a target. It was the first time the officers had been told about the pending operation.

After their meeting, General Shelton called the White House to say that the officers shared his opposition to bombing the tannery. Other senior officials began to object, and Mr. Berger relayed those concerns to President Clinton on Martha's Vinyard.

At about midnight, Mr. Clinton consulted some of his other advisors, and finally ordered that the tannery be removed from the target list at about 2 A.M.

In Washington, late in the day on Aug. 19, several officials, including members of the Administration's committee of top counterterrorism experts, were summoned to Mr. Clarke's office at the National Security Council and told to remain there for the evening. The group's members had met previously to discuss the idea of a retaliatory strike but had not been involved in selecting targets.

The officials were told of the decision to strike for the first time by Mr. Clarke that night, according to an official at the meeting. But as Mr. Clarke gave them reports to read about Al Shifa, he was met with skepticism.

Some in the group told Mr. Clarke that the intelligence was too thin. "People said, 'Dick, what is this?' " according to the participant, but Mr. Clarke brushed aside those concerns and said the decision to strike had already been made.

The officials had been summoned that night not to pass judgment on the target, Mr. Clarke told them, but to help prepare paperwork related to the operation, including talking points for American ambassadors around the world and briefings for Congress and the press after the bombing.

In an interview, Mr. Clarke denied that anyone raised doubts during that meeting or at any other time before or after the attack on Al Shifa. The "people brought in the night before were brought in to do paperwork," not to review the targets, he said.

Across the Potomac River at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va., similar worries were being expressed. Senior agency officials gathered in Mr. Tenet's conference room to discuss the targets and, one participant said, there was strong disagreement about the plans.

Questions about Al Shifa also surfaced at the State Department just before the attack. Mr. Pickering was shown the intelligence analysts' memo expressing skepticism about the intelligence, he said, and he mentioned the findings to Secretary Albright.

Mr. Pickering and Dr. Albright both decided to support the decision, however. They were convinced that the evidence, primarily the soil sample, was persuasive, he said.

Telling the Public
A Straight Face Belied Criticism
 

In the days after the attack, an international debate erupted, with Sudan demanding damages and an independent review of case. In Washington, senior officials insisted that the links between Mr. bin Laden, the factory and chemical weapons were strong and compelling.

There was much less certainty behind the scenes.

Soon after the strike, word began to filter out of the Government that senior intelligence officials, including Jack Downing, the head of the C.I.A. Directorate of Operations, its clandestine espionage arm, believed that the attack was not justified.

Others raising similar questions included the head of the Africa division at the directorate and the chief of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, whose office had collected the intelligence on the site.

While these officials did not question that the intelligence raised strong suspicions, they found the connections between Al Shifa and Mr. bin Laden too indirect to support the public statements justifying the attack. Mr. Downing and the other two officials, whose names have been withheld at the request of the agency, would not comment.

At the intelligence branch of the State Department, officials began drafting a report renewing doubts about the evidence.

Soon after the strike, the C.I.A. conducted a study of its own and gathered intelligence about the plant's owner, a Sudanese businessman named Salah Idris, saying it had found new evidence about his possible financial connections to the terrorist group Islamic Jihad, which in turn has strong connections to Mr. bin Laden.

But agency officials acknowledged that they did not know that he owned the plant at the time of the strike. Officials also acknowledge that the soil sample from Al Shifa was obtained about four months before Mr. Idris bought the plant in March 1998.

Officials also say now that Mr. Idris was never put on the Government's terrorist watch list, either before or after the attack.

But after the attack, the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control froze Mr. Idris' accounts at Bank of America branches in London and Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, prompting Mr. Idris to file suit against the Government seeking the release of his funds. In May the Treasury Department agreed to free his assets, which totaled more than $24 million, just before the Government's response to his lawsuit was due in court. Mr. Idris has reportedly considered filing suit against the United States seeking damages for the loss of his plant, but has not yet done so.

Mr. bin Laden, meanwhile, reportedly remains in Afghanistan, and the United States has warned repeatedly during the last year that he has been attempting to attack American targets. Senior Administration officials now say they believe that Mr. bin Laden is trying to develop chemical weapons in Afghanistan, and may have obtained them.
 http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos: THE CRITICS -- Phyllis Oakley, who retired last month as an Assistant Secretary of State, and her staff insisted that evidence of terrorist ties was too slim to justify the bombing. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times); THE FACTORY -- Fourteen months after it was hit by a U.S. cruise missile, the Al Shifa plant is still a ruin. Sudan says it made pharmaceuticals, not chemicals for bombs, and many who examine the plant agree, but the Administration stands by its decision. (Ian Fisher/The New York Times); THE DEFENDERS -- Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering and the Secretary, Madeleine K. Albright, suspect the fugitive Osama bin Laden planned to use the plant. (Photographs by Associated Press)(pg. A14)
 

LOAD-DATE: October 27, 1999
 
 
 
 

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 570 words

HEADLINE: Sudan, Angry at U.S. Attack, Freed Bomb Suspects, Officials Say

BYLINE:  By JAMES RISEN

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 29

BODY:
Immediately after the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa last Aug. 7, Sudan detained two men suspected of being involved in the plot, but angrily released them two weeks later, after an American cruise missile strike on Sudan, American officials said today.

Sudanese officials have said the United States had been notified that the two suspects were in custody, and American law enforcement officials have confirmed the account. American officials confirmed today that key White House and State Department officials dealing with counterterrorism and African issues have over the past year been adamantly opposed to reopening relations with Sudan, and that this reticence prompted them last August to discount the Sudanese offer of assistance in the investigation.

In addition, Sudanese officials complain that Washington disregarded their message that possible suspects had been detained.

American officials have been reluctant over the last few months to discuss the incident, but several have now confirmed that the Sudanese did notify the United States that they were holding the men immediately after the embassy bombings.

Sudanese officials said the two men were arrested after they arrived in Khartoum from Nairobi, Kenya, soon after the embassy bombing of the American Embassy there. They were detained after they were discovered to be carrying false Pakistani passports, a senior Sudanese official said.

The United States, saying it had obtained evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the bombings, responded on Aug. 20, 1998, by attacking a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan where he was believed to be attending a meeting, as well as the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum that the United States suspected was involved in Mr. bin Laden's efforts to produce the deadly nerve gas VX.

After the cruise missile strike against al-Shifa, angry Sudanese officials released the two men, and sent them to Pakistan, officials said.

Nearly a year later, the decision to launch a strike against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan remains the most controversial aspect of the Clinton Administration's response to the embassy bombings. Some of the Administration's initial statements about the nature of the links between the al-Shifa plant and Mr. bin Laden's terrorist network proved incomplete or false.

American intelligence officials eventually acknowledged that their strongest link between the plant and VX production was a soil sample taken near the plant that contained evidence of a chemical "precursor" used in producing VX.

But officials admitted that they could not say whether VX was produced at the al-Shifa plant or was merely stored or transported through the facility.

They also conceded that they had outdated information on the ownership of the plant, and at the time of the strike did not know that it had been sold to a Saudi businessman. Some Central Intelligence Agency and State Department officials had privately questioned the decision to strike, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to prove a link either to nerve gas or to Mr. bin Laden.

As questions about the evidence mounted, the United States was forced in May to unfreeze assets of al-Shifa's owner, Salih Idris.

The Clinton Administration continues to defend its decision to strike al-Shifa, arguing that the evidence of links to Mr. bin Laden and nerve gas were compelling.  http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: July 30, 1999
 

SECTION: Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1090 words

HEADLINE: Experts Find No Arms Chemicals at Bombed Sudan Plant

BYLINE:  By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 8

BODY:
Chemists who examined soil, sludge and debris samples from a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed in August by American cruise missiles found no traces of chemical weapon compounds, according to a scientist hired by the owner of the plant.

The findings, although prepared privately for lawyers for the owner, who is now seeking redress from the United States, raise new questions about the Government's reliance on tests of soil samples from the site obtained clandestinely by the Central Intelligence Agency. The American officials had said the samples contained traces of Empta, a precursor used in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. The United States attacked Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum and suspected terrorist training camps near Khost, Afghanistan, on Aug. 20 in an effort to curb the activities of the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden after the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. American officials have said that the bin Laden terrorist network was behind the bombings of the diplomatic missions in Kenya and Tanzania. Mr. bin Laden has denied any role in the bombing.

At the heart of the new evidence are 13 carefully catalogued samples taken from the wrecked plant and its grounds late in October. The sampling project was designed and supervised by Prof. Thomas D. Tullius, chairman of the chemistry department at Boston University.

"The point of what we did was to carefully and scientifically collect samples from a variety of locations and have them analyzed by one of the top laboratories in the world for this kind of work," Professor Tullius said in an interview. "What they found was that in those samples, to the practical limits of scientific detection, there was no Empta or Empa, its breakdown product."

In response to the new findings, Clinton Administration officials said they stood by their decision to strike the plant. The officials dismissed the findings of chemists working on behalf of the plant's owner, Salih Idris, noting that their soil samples were taken long after the United States obtained its soil from the site and long after the bombing and rains could have dispersed incriminating evidence.

Moreover, while they acknowledged that they did not know that Mr. Idris owned the plant at the time of the attack, other American officials say they now have strong evidence linking him to Mr. bin Laden.

"We stand by our evidence indicating the presence of a chemical weapons precursor at this plant," said P. J. Crowley, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House. "We stand by our evidence linking this plant to Osama bin Laden's network. We continue to believe that this was an appropriate action to pre-empt Osama bin Laden from further attacks against the United States."

Several ground locations at the plant were surveyed, along with interior sites in the plant that were covered by debris and partly protected from rain. One location, a septic tank, was found intact and provided what Professor Tullius said was a historical record of the chemicals flushed through the plant drains.

The lab analysis found that none of the samples contained detectable levels of Empta, nor did they find Empa, the subsidiary compound into which Empta rapidly breaks down. Empta, Professor Tullius said, breaks down within days, but Empa remains in the soil, and even in small quantities would be detectable for weeks or months after contact with the ground.

In addition to the evaluation of the new soil samples, an international security company, Kroll Associates, was hired by Mr. Idris's lawyers to conduct a detailed review of the Shifa controversy. In their report, made available to The New York Times, Kroll Associates found no evidence of a direct link between Mr. Idris and Mr. bin Laden.

The scientists and investigators were hired by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, which represents Mr. Idris, a Sudanese-born Saudi businessman. The law firm has a long-held reputation of influence in Democratic circles with partners like Robert Strauss, the former Democratic Party chairman, and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a close friend of President Clinton.

But its credentials have not benefited Mr. Idris. The firm's lawyers have been flatly rebuffed in their efforts to present their findings to the White House, National Security Council or the Justice, Treasury and Defense Departments.

"We've been confronted with the problem of proving a series of negatives that there was no Empta at the plant and that Idris was not a terrorist," said Mark J. MacDougall, a partner at the law firm. "We think we've done that with evidence that can be admitted in court. But to date responsible officials, including at the White House, have flatly refused to look at the facts. We're sorry about that."

The lawyers have not yet decided whether they will sue the Government, in what would probably be complex litigation with an uncertain outcome. But nevertheless, Mr. MacDougall said Mr. Idris wanted to clear his name and unfreeze millions of dollars in bank accounts at the Bank of America that the Treasury Department's office of foreign assets control that were blocked after the Shifa attack. In addition, Mr. Idris is seeking millions of dollars to replace the plant.

In interviews with Western consultants to the factory, employees and others, the Kroll investigators said they had found no evidence that the plant had been heavily guarded or that there had been secret areas in the factory off-limits to outsiders, where chemical weapons might have been produced or stored. The report concluded that the plant produced only veterinary medicines and pharmaceuticals for human consumption. While Al Shifa did export to Iraq, Kroll found no evidence of a chemical weapons link to Baghdad.

But the Kroll investigation did provide new details about Mr. Idris and confirmed his commercial links to Sudan's Military Industrial Corporation, the Government entity that produces weapons for the Sudanese Army. The United States charged that the corporation was also responsible for chemical weapons production in the country, and that Mr. bin Laden had provided financing for the agency.

The Kroll report determined that Mr. Idris did have links to the corporation, through his other business interests in Sudan, but not through Al Shifa. Kroll investigators said the corporation was a powerful military-based organization that reaches into many parts of the Sudanese economy, including Mr. Idris's business empire.

        http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: February 9, 1999
 
 
 
 

SECTION: Section A; Page 28; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 459 words

HEADLINE: Dubious Decisions on the Sudan

BODY:
Almost immediately after American missiles destroyed the Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan last month, serious questions arose about whether the Clinton Administration had targeted the right factory. The Administration insisted that the factory was producing nerve gas for terrorists. But a report in Monday's Times by Tim Weiner and James Risen reveals that the decision to attack the plant was based in part on incomplete information and inference.

The Administration argues that it nevertheless had enough to go on to justify the attack. But the launching of deadly American missiles requires more solid and convincing evidence than Washington appears to have had in this case. The crucial decisions leading up to the attack were made by a narrow group of top national security officials meeting alone. Knowledgeable staff members were excluded to assure secrecy. With America's Embassy in Khartoum closed, up-to-date information was scarce. Hard proof linking the Shifa factory to terrorism and nerve gas production was elusive, and the indirect evidence that was available was incomplete and open to conflicting interpretations. In addition, the Central Intelligence Agency had recently concluded that reports that had appeared to document a clear link between the Sudanese Government and terrorist activities were fabricated and unreliable.

Soon after the Aug. 20 missile attack, the Administration was compelled to retreat from its claims that the Shifa factory had been directly financed by Osama bin Laden, the alleged terrorist linked to the deadly attacks on two American Embassies in Africa. Washington still insists that soil samples in American possession conclusively prove that an early stage of nerve gas production was taking place at the plant. But Western scientists who recently worked at the plant insist they knew of no nerve gas work.

Instead, they say, Shifa was the Sudan's main source of locally needed agricultural chemicals and veterinary medicines. Whether or not it turns out that the United States destroyed the Shifa plant in error, Washington should offer to replace any lost production of agricultural and veterinary products from the plant. It does not help the war against terrorism to hurt innocent civilians.

Washington's nerve gas allegations may well be correct. But the record badly needs to be clarified. Wrongly, the Administration has resisted calls for independent verification of soil samples from the plant. It should agree to such review.

The United States is entitled to use military force to protect itself against terrorism. But the case for every such action must be rigorously established. In the case of the Sudan, Washington has conspicuously failed to prove its case.

LOAD-DATE: September 23, 1998
 
 
 

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 2240 words

HEADLINE: DECISION TO STRIKE FACTORY IN SUDAN BASED ON SURMISE INFERRED FROM EVIDENCE

BYLINE:   By TIM WEINER and JAMES RISEN

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 20

BODY:
Shortly after investigators linked Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile, to the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa, six of President Clinton's most senior advisers convened in the White House situation room to plot a counterattack with cruise missiles.

Few national security issues in Mr. Clinton's presidency were handled with greater secrecy or by a smaller group of people. The Administration was determined to avoid leaks, and that meant limiting deliberations to the "small group," the President's innermost circle. The security precautions worked. The strikes against Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan on Aug. 20 took the world by surprise.

But within days of the attack, some of the Administration's explanations for destroying the factory in the Sudan proved inaccurate. Many people inside and outside the American Government began to ask whether questionable intelligence had prompted the United States to blow up the wrong building.

Senior officials now say their case for attacking the factory relied on inference as well as evidence that it produced chemical weapons for Mr. bin Laden's use. And a reconstruction of how the "small group" and the President picked the bombing targets, based on interviews with participants and others at high levels in the national security apparatus, offers new details of how an act of war was approved on the basis of shards of evidence gleaned from telephone intercepts, spies and scientific analysis.

Officials disclosed that the decision to attack came after several years of bitter disagreement within the Administration about how to handle the Sudan after the United States placed it on its short list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

In January 1996, the C.I.A. formally withdrew more than 100 of its intelligence reports on the Sudan after concluding that their source was a fabricator.

The reports, many of which dealt with terrorist threats against Americans in the Sudan, were withdrawn within weeks of decisions to pull American diplomats and spies out of the Sudan because of the dangerous political conditions there.

The absence of American personnel has made assembling a clear picture of the Sudan all the more difficult. In their absence, the United States has had to rely increasingly on exiles, opposition groups and governments of nearby countries for its information.

Among the evidence that convinced the "small group" and President Clinton to attack Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan's capital, Khartoum, included a report from a "sensitive source" who said Mr. bin Laden had asked Sudanese officials to help him obtain chemical weapons that could be used against American installations.

"Bin Laden directly involved himself with the Sudanese Government, trying to get it to test poisonous gases in case they could be be tried against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia," a senior intelligence official said.

But American officials do not know for certain that this plan was carried out, or that Al Shifa had been directly involved.

The Central Intelligence Agency had been looking at Al Shifa for 18 months. The agency had obtained a soil sample from outside the plant, revealing the presence of Empta, a chemical used to make VX nerve gas. There were more circumstantial pieces of evidence linking Mr. bin Laden to that factory, the agency is said to have believed.

The Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, told the five other members of the group that Mr. bin Laden had asked Sudanese leaders about three years ago to help him make poison gas with which to attack American troops in Saudi Arabia.

Berger and Albright Were Convinced

"We believed he was deep in a hunt for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons," one senior Administration official at that meeting said. "Was it safe to ignore that evidence? After very careful deliberation, it was decided, on balance, that it would be irresponsible of us not to attack the plant."

Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, and Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright were convinced that the Sudan could be making weapons for Mr. bin Laden.

Ms. Albright called the Sudan "a viper's nest of terrorists" in 1996, not long after unconfirmed intelligence reports that terrorists in the Sudan were plotting to kill Mr. Berger's predecessor, Anthony Lake. Mr. Berger said in an interview that the evidence at the meeting was "extremely convincing."

Two days later, on Aug. 12, the "small group" met with President Clinton in the Oval Office. Gen. Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave him a list of targets in the Sudan. The best one, all agreed, was Al Shifa. The President approved an attack on the plant two days later.

But now some State Department and C.I.A. officials argue that the Government cannot justify its actions.

"As an American citizen, I am not convinced of the evidence," said one Administration official who says the United States may have made a mistake.

Hours after they launched cruise missiles at the factory on Aug. 20, senior national security advisers described Al Shifa as a secret chemical weapons factory financed by Mr. bin Laden. But a month after the attack, those same officials concede that they had no evidence directly linking Mr. bin Laden to the factory at the time the President ordered the strike.

Nor are they certain whether their soil sample proves that Empta, the suspected precursor chemical for VX, was made at Al Shifa or was just stored or shipped through there.

No Piece of Paper, But Strong Inference
 

Senior Administration officials concede that they made inaccurate statements about the plant on Aug. 20 and did a poor job of publicly stating their case against the factory.

"We were not accurate," a senior Administration official said. "That was a mistake."

But officials argue that their actions have been criticized because some of their most sensitive evidence has been kept secret. So they are now making some of that evidence public.

"I don't have a piece of paper that says, in a wiring diagram," that Al Shifa is connected to the Sudanese military-industrial complex, a senior intelligence official said. But "evidence plus inference" creates a strong case that the plant is connected, through the complex, to Mr. bin Laden, he said.

Intelligence officials said they had found financial transactions between Mr. bin Laden and Sudan's Government-run Military Industrial Corporation, which they say was the organization overseeing chemical weapons development.

Even though the intelligence officials did not know who owned the plant at the time of the attack, they now say its nominal owner, Salih Idris, is a front man for Mr. bin Laden. But a lawyer for Mr. Idris, an adviser to Saudi Arabia's largest bank, says Mr. Idris has never met Mr. bin Laden.

The C.I.A. has been told that Osman Sulayman, the general manager of the plant, was deported from Saudi Arabia around 1995 for his suspected ties to Mr. bin Laden.

Another senior official said: "Al Shifa was to one degree or another involved in chemical weapons production. I can't tell you whether the VX precursor was produced or stored there. But the plant is tied to Sudan's military-industrial complex, which is tied to bin Laden."

Other Administration officials still doubt their own Government's explanations. One said: "The decision to target Al Shifa continues a tradition of operating on inadequate intelligence about Sudan." That pattern of policies shaped by questionable intelligence reports about Sudan, these skeptical officials say, is at least three years old.

Unreliable Informants Warned of Terror
 

In late 1995 the C.I.A. realized that a foreign agent who had warned repeatedly of startling terrorist threats against American diplomats, spies and their children in Khartoum was fabricating information.

They withdrew his reports, but the climate of fear and mistrust created by the reports bolstered the case for withdrawing personnel from the American Embassy in Khartoum, officials said.

Some officials say that the decision was also driven, in part, by a second C.I.A. source, who warned in 1995 that Anthony Lake, then the national security adviser, would be assassinated by terrorists based in the Sudan. Mr. Lake moved into Blair House, a Federal mansion across the street from the White House, and then to a second undisclosed location, after the threat was reported.

"The threat to Tony Lake had a chilling effect on the National Security Council," an Administration official said. But the source's reports were never verified or corroborated by any other evidence, officials say. He disappeared from view around the time the embassy's personnel were withdrawn.

The embassy remained closed, even though, as a senior intelligence official put it, "the threat wasn't there" as of 1996.

Battle in Washington Has Raged for Years
 

Senior Administration officials argue that the flawed intelligence reports had no impact on their thinking. They said that increasing threats in 1995, including incidents in which shots were fired at American officials, had driven the decision.

But they conceded that shutting the embassy and the C.I.A.'s station in the Sudan eroded their ability to gather intelligence about the country and about Al Shifa.

The argument over the closing of the embassy and the attack on the Sudan are part of a battle that has been raging inside the Government for years.

On one side of this battle are officials who want change the Sudan by punishing and isolating it. Others would change the Sudan's conduct by cajoling and engaging its leaders. The isolators have won.

In 1991 the Sudanese began to allow any Muslim into the country, without a visa, in a show of Islamic solidarity. In the years since, hundreds of suspected terrorists from around the world, including Mr. bin Laden, used the Sudan as a safe haven. In 1993 the State Department placed the Sudan on its list of states sponsoring terrorism.

The isolators had evidence to support the case for closing the embassy and imposing sanctions against the Sudan. In March 1995, two of Mr. bin Laden's operatives shadowed an embassy official in Khartoum. In June, Egyptian radicals based in the Sudan tried to assassinate the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. United States intelligence officials say they believe that the man who was then chief of the Sudan's security service was involved.

The Sudan never moved to arrest the suspects. A few months later, the C.I.A. reported indications that Iranian operatives in the Sudan were conspiring to attack United States officials, although nothing came of that threat.

Susan Rice, now the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and a leading advocate of isolating the Sudan, said in an interview that she had become convinced that talking to the Sudanese was increasingly fruitless.

Some in Government Saw Cause for Hope
 

Others in the Government say there was reason for hope. In August 1994, the Sudan had turned over the elusive international terrorist who called himself Carlos. The State Department called that "a significant development."

When the United States protested to the Sudan about surveillance of embassy personnel, Sudanese officials said they had found out that it had been done by Mr. bin Laden's men and expelled them. In September 1995, the Sudan stopped letting Arab travelers enter the country without visas.

And on March 8, 1996, a month after the embassy was closed, C.I.A. and State Department officers met secretly with a Sudanese official in Washington. They asked the Sudanese to turn over the names of more than 200 bin Laden operatives allowed into the Sudan since 1994, information on Iranian and Arab radicals in the country and the whereabouts of the three Egyptians suspected of trying to kill Mr. Mubarak.

In May 1996, at the request of the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Sudan expelled Mr. bin Laden, who moved to Afghanistan. Sudanese officials also say they sent 100 of his operatives and their dependents to Afghanistan as well.

But United States officials were convinced that the Sudanese were insincere. "With the exception of the expulsion of Osama bin Laden, which was not followed by any steps to get rid of his financial network, they have not done anything serious," Ms. Rice said.

Dialogue Faltered By the End of 1996
 

By the end of 1996, the dialogue between the United States and the Sudan was falling apart, officials said.

In February 1997, the Sudanese President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, sent President Clinton a personal letter. It offered, among other things, to allow United States intelligence, law-enforcement and counterterrorism personnel to enter the Sudan, and to go anywhere and see anything, to help stamp out terrorism.

The United States never replied to that letter. The isolators derided it as a meaningless "charm offensive" by the Sudan, in Ms. Rice's words.

A senior Sudanese official made a similar offer directly to the F.B.I. six months ago: send a counterterrorism team to the Sudan, and we will help in any way we can, it said. The F.B.I. wrote back in June, declining the opportunity.

Sometime in recent months, the C.I.A. became certain that it had discovered Empta at Al Shifa. On Aug. 14, President Clinton approved the plant's destruction.
 

CORRECTION-DATE: September 22, 1998, Tuesday

CORRECTION:
Headlines yesterday with a front-page article about the United States' attack on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on Aug. 20 referred incompletely to senior officials' account of the decision to act. As noted in the article, they attributed the choice of a target to evidence as well as inference. They did not say it was based on surmise.
 
 

LOAD-DATE: September 21, 1998

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1957 words

HEADLINE: MILITANT LEADER WAS A U.S. TARGET SINCE THE SPRING

BYLINE:  By JAMES RISEN

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 5

BODY:
United States intelligence officials drew up secret plans last spring for a covert raid to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to senior United States Government officials.

The officials said the planning began after United States military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials concluded they had ample evidence linking Mr. bin Laden to a series of anti-American terrorist attacks in recent years. The plan, developed by the Central Intelligence Agency and American special forces months before the August bombings of two American Embassies, called for American forces to extricate the Saudi millionaire from his hideout in Afghanistan and bring him to justice in the United States.

White House officials were aware of the mission, which was ultimately shelved by the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and other senior officials because of the high risks involved. Those included the potential for many casualties among Americans and innocent Afghans.

But Administration officials said they were still working to develop a broad range of other options aimed at Mr. bin Laden or to dismantle his terrorist network when bombs exploded on Aug. 7 at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 263 people, among them 12 Americans.

The officials' accounts of the covert planning add a new dimension to President Clinton's decision to launch a cruise missile attack against Mr. bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan with suspected links to Mr. bin Laden's efforts to obtain chemical weapons.

The Administration has presented the cruise missile attack as an instance of Mr. Clinton's decisiveness in the face of terrorism. Swift retaliation was ordered, an Administration spokesman said, because the evidence linking Mr. bin Laden to the bombings had come together quickly and unequivocally and because the United States had received information that he might strike again.

Mr. bin Laden, a Saudi exile who lives in Afghanistan, has announced his plans to attack Americans, and American authorities believe that he directed the embassy bombings.

But in fact, officials now acknowledge, intelligence and military officials were convinced long before the bombings that an attack against Mr. bin Laden was justified. The bombings in Africa and the speed with which investigators linked them to operatives working for the Saudi exile, officials say, gave crucial political impetus to those already advocating a counterstrike.

The precise timing and motivation of the missile attack has raised questions, with some of Mr. Clinton's critics suggesting that he might have acted quickly to distract attention from his personal problems.

American officials point to the fact that long-term planning against Mr. bin Laden was under way at the time of the embassy bombings as evidence that the cruise missile attack was not hastily improvised by the White House because of domestic political calculations. "These things take a long time to plan and work out," an official said.

Yet Mr. Clinton and his top aides have generally been cautious about the use of military force and have turned down other proposed covert raids to capture suspects overseas.

In 1997, in fact, the C.I.A. and special forces abandoned a plan to arrest Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader charged with war crimes, after failing to win high-level approval for the operation.

The cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and the Sudan were a much lower risk operation than the proposed raid against Mr. bin Laden and did not result in any American casualties. But it also did not bring Mr. bin Laden to heel. Administration officials said that while some other terrorists were killed in the Afghan strike, Mr. bin Laden escaped unscathed.

Planning of the cruise missile operation was handled by a small circle of Mr. Clinton's closest national security aides and remains shrouded in secrecy. But several Administration officials agreed to describe how -- in their view -- Mr. bin Laden has become, during the last several years, the international terrorist viewed as the most serious threat facing American interests.

Now said to be in his early 40's, Mr. bin Laden, an Islamic radical and exiled scion of an influential and enormously wealthy Saudi family, was initially an ally of the United States in the 1980's, as a supporter of the C.I.A.-backed Afghan rebels battling the Soviet occupying forces.

He used his wealth to contribute millions of dollars to the rebels' ultimate triumph and is said to have helped recruit and support thousands of other Arab volunteers who joined the Afghan cause.

"Back then, we thought of him as that nice Saudi businessman who was supporting the rebels," said a former C.I.A. official involved in the agency's Afghan program.

But after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and began to support militant Islamic groups that opposed moderate Arab governments.

Finally, he turned completely against the United States with the onset of the Persian Gulf crisis after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He saw the presence of hundreds of thousands of American and other foreign troops on Saudi soil as a deep religious affront -- the return of barbarian Crusaders to defile Islam's holy places.

He vowed to wage war against the American presence in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi leaders who had brought them into the country.

American officials now say they believe that it was not a coincidence that the two embassy bombings in Africa occurred on Aug. 7th. Eight years earlier on that date, the first American forces landed in Saudi Arabia as part of the effort to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990.

American officials now believe that Mr. bin Laden began his terror campaign soon after the end of the Persian Gulf war, ultimately emerging as the leading individual sponsor of anti-American terrorism.

After being forced out of Saudi Arabia, Mr. bin Laden moved to the Sudan, where he invested in a wide array of businesses and became a close ally of Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the Sudan's governing party, who provided state support for Mr. bin Laden's terrorism.

With an inherited fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. bin Laden created a series of front organizations that provided the financing and the cover for networks of terrorist operatives. He supported terrorists in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, the Sudan, Lebanon and the Philippines.

American analysts say they have linked Mr. bin Laden and his network to a wide array of successful terrorist acts as well as aborted plots, ranging from plans to kill Pope John Paul II and President Clinton during visits to Manila to the botched bombing in December 1992 of a hotel in Yemen where American soldiers bound for Somalia were staying, a 1995 attempt to kill President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and a 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed five American soldiers.

By the mid-1990's, as other terrorist groups began to fade away and American experts began to understand Mr. bin Laden's significance, the United States made his group a major focus of its counterterrorism efforts. As early as 1993, in fact, Federal officials say, Mr. bin Laden had become the subject of F.B.I. scrutiny after the World Trade Center bombing.

In 1995, a back-channel meeting was held between American and Sudanese officials in Europe, during which the American officials warned the Sudanese that evicting Mr. bin Laden was one of several preconditions their Government would have to meet before gaining international legitimacy. A year later, Mr. bin Laden left the Sudan for Afghanistan, but American officials insist that Sudanese leaders never severed their ties to him.

By 1996, Mr. bin Laden had emerged as the leading target of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center, the Government's central clearinghouse for intelligence on terrorists.

He was mentioned in a secret Presidential covert action order on terrorism signed by Mr. Clinton that authorized intelligence agencies to plan and carry out covert operations that might lead to some deaths.

American officials are barred by executive order from planning an assassination. But a "lethal" Presidential order, or finding, is a recognition that the action contemplated could lead to some of those involved being killed. Such a finding would permit Mr. bin Laden's inadvertent death in a military operation against his network.

To track his activities, the National Security Agency's eavesdropping satellites were used to listen in on conversations of his operatives throughout the world, while spy satellites that take photographs from space allowed C.I.A. analysts to monitor his training camps.

With so many intelligence resources targeted against Mr. bin Laden, C.I.A. analysts were able to determine that in January he held a meeting with leading members of his network to prepare for a new wave of terrorism.

He soon announced his intentions when he issued a "fatwa," or edict, calling on Muslims to kill Americans.

"There were reams of intel documenting bin Laden before," the embassy bombings in East Africa, an American official said. Another official said, "We've had the book on this guy for a long time."

At some point in this period -- officials declined to specify precisely when -- Federal prosecutors in New York obtained a sealed indictment that charged him with terrorism crimes.

In April, the chief American delegate to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, traveled to Afghanistan and called on the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that controls most of the country, to extradite him. The Taliban refused, and American officials apparently abandoned diplomatic efforts to negotiate the handover of Mr. bin Laden.

At the time of Mr. Richardson's talks with the Taliban, criminal charges had not yet been formally issued against Mr. bin Laden in the United States, but Federal prosecutors in New York were already working on a criminal case against him, officials said. Federal prosecutors later did obtain a sealed indictment against Mr. bin Laden from a New York grand jury charging him with terrorist crimes. The indictment, returned in the months before the Aug. 7 embassy bombings in East Africa, would have provided the legal basis for his capture and arrest.

Also in this period, military and intelligence officials began drawing up plans either to capture Mr. bin Laden or to deal a blow to his network through other options under consideration.

While those plans received high-level attention, officials caution that it is not clear that any of them were ready to be carried out before the terrorist attacks in Africa. As a result, officials stressed that there is no sense of regret among policy makers that they waited too long to go after Mr. bin Laden.

Several officials familiar with the planning for the covert raid to capture Mr. bin Laden inside Afghanistan also emphasized that the risky nature of the mission, rather than any political calculation in Washington, was behind its ultimate rejection. Some officials said the planning needed much more work before it could have gone forward.

To be successful, a covert raid into Afghanistan would almost certainly have required the assistance or acquiescence of neighboring Pakistan, which could have provided the staging area for launching the mission.

But over the centuries, Afghanistan has been the deathbed of invading armies, and the bid to extract the well-defended Mr. bin Laden from his haven in the Afghan wilds could have ended badly for American forces even with Pakistani support.
 

GRAPHIC: Photo: American intelligence officials had secret plans last spring to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He posed at his camp in 1996. (Robert Fisk/The Independent)(pg. 14)

LOAD-DATE: September 6, 1998

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1009 words

HEADLINE: U.S. FURY ON 2 CONTINENTS: THE INTELLIGENCE;
U.S. Says It Has Strong Evidence Of Threat Justifying Retaliation

BYLINE:  By JAMES RISEN

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 20

BODY:
The American strikes in Afghanistan and the Sudan today came after United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies had gathered what officials described as the strongest evidence ever obtained in a major terrorist case.

The United States intelligence community has been convinced for years that Osama bin Laden has been involved in a long series of attacks against American interests. But the officials said they had more comprehensive and conclusive evidence than ever before linking Mr. bin Laden to the bombings at the American embassies in Africa earlier this month. President Clinton said that evidence provided the justification he needed to order the attacks. But Mr. Clinton and his aides provided no real details of the evidence, and in some major aspects, the credibility of the Administration's case against Mr. bin Laden was difficult to assess, both for the African bombings specifically and for terrorist activities in general.

In his speech, Mr. Clinton accused Mr. bin Laden of an array of actual and plotted terrorist acts, from attacks on American soldiers in Somalia to plots against the Pope and American passenger planes.

Perhaps the most detailed bit of evidence to back the American accusations was not even spelled out by the President.

In Albania, the authorities, aided by American intelligence agents, arrested five men who were described as Egyptian Islamic terrorists and seized material indicating that they intended to bomb the American Embassy in Tirana, Albanian officials said. American officials said that plot was one of several attacks planned by Mr. bin Laden's network. It was not clear whether that plot was to have been carried out before or after the bombings in Africa. Page A13.

American Government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said credible evidence showed that a number of leading members of what they called an international terrorist network sponsored by Mr. bin Laden would be gathering today at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan to plan further attacks on the United States.

By attacking the meeting site, the United States hoped to badly damage the terrorist network, officials said. They said they would not be able to assess the damage done at the terrorist camp until Friday.

The Government's counter-terrorism center, based at the Central Intelligence Agency "feels strongly that there is as much and as rich evidence from a wide variety of sources on this case as they have ever had," said a senior American official. "Our information was convincing, and we had a high confidence level that these bombings were planned and carried out by bin Laden's network. And we had compelling evidence that bin Laden and his organization were planning further attacks. If we didn't take action, we were going to get hit, there's no doubt in our mind."

United States officials declined to provide any details of the evidence linking Mr. bin Laden to the embassy bombings, but they have said they strongly suspected his involvement since the day of the attacks. As their investigation gained momentum, they said, the links to Mr. bin Laden quickly began to emerge. In contrast to other recent major terrorist cases, which have required months or years to solve, the evidence against Mr. bin Laden in the East Africa bombings came together with remarkable speed.

Officials would not comment today on earlier reports from Pakistan that Mohammad Saddiq Odeh, a suspect arrested in Pakistan and sent back to Kenya for interrogation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had told Pakistani investigators that the bombings were the work of Mr. bin Laden.

"We had early indications, and over time the information got better," a senior American intelligence official said. "We had multiple sources, and the picture was extremely convincing. You have to be careful how you weigh early information, but in this case it was very compelling."

"Rarely do numerous sources converge so uniformly and persuasively as they did in the course of our investigation into the responsibility for these terrorist acts," added the President's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger.

The Zhawar Kili guerrilla camp, near Khost, Afghanistan, where the terrorist conference was expected to be held, was hit by American sea-launched cruise-missiles. American officials said that Mr. bin Laden had held a similar conference in Afghanistan in January, apparently to plan attacks against the United States. Mr. bin Laden's networks have issued new terrorist threats against the United States since the embassy bombings, and so American officials believe that the Thursday meeting was to plan future attacks.

"We had information that something in the camp was going to take place today," said a senior American official. "It's possible the meeting was to plan further attacks."

American officials say the camps have been in existence since the 1980's and today they showed satellite photos of a vast complex that they said included the camps. They added that the bin Laden network uses the camps for training.

One American official said that since May, Mr. bin Laden has become increasingly cautious about his personal security. Earlier, he had stayed largely in one place outside Kandahar, Afghanistan, but since May he has been moving frequently, perhaps out of a fear that his campaign would make him more of a target, an American official said.

In addition to the attack on the camp in Afghanistan, the United States struck at what the Sudanese call a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, capital of the Sudan, which American officials said was making a precursor element used in the production of VX, a potent nerve gas.

A senior American official said that Mr. bin Laden has been working with the Sudanese Government since 1995 or 1996 to try to develop a chemical weapons capability. The plant in Khartoum, struck by American cruise missiles Thursday, was operated by the Sudanese military-industrial complex, which has been financially supported by Mr. bin Laden.
 

GRAPHIC: Photo: President Clinton after announcing attacks in the Sudan and Afghanistan yesterday, before leaving Martha's Vineyard for Washington. (Associated Press)(pg. A1)
 

LOAD-DATE: August 21, 1998

U.N. inquiry into US bombing of Sudan blocked
 

SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 4A

LENGTH: 809 words

HEADLINE: ISLAMIC STATES ASK U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL TO INVESTIGATE;
U.S. ATTACK ON SUDAN

BYLINE: From News Wire Services

BODY:
 

UNITED NATIONS -- Islamic states at the United Nations on Sunday backed Sudan's demand for an urgent Security Council meeting and a U.N. inquiry into the American attack that destroyed a pharmaceutical factory near Khartoum.

But the League of Arab States, in a formal letter to the Security Council, did not call for any specific action except for the United States to "refrain from such acts which constitute violations of national sovereignty." It said the U.S. missile attack Thursday was a "blatant violation" of international law.

Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. officials said Sunday that the United States is assessing the damage inflicted on the alleged terrorist network of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden in last week's attack and that more strikes are possible. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright told ABC's "This Week" that Thursday's U.S. missile attack on suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan had hurt bin Laden's suspected ability to conduct a terrorist campaign against Americans. She and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said U.S. officials were assessing the damage from the attacks against suspected camps in Afghanistan and the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that the United States said was also making components for chemical weapons.

However, the Islamic group of countries at the United Nations, in a letter signed by Qatar, their chairman, said members "unanimously decided to endorse the request" from Sudan for an urgent meeting as well as a fact-finding mission to investigate the charges that the plant manufactured agents for chemical weapons rather than medicines.

Council President Danilo Turk of Slovenia said the issue would be considered at an informal, closed-door meeting today. But with the United States a permanent member of the 15-seat council, diplomats said they did not expect the body to take any immediate action.

U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson, in a letter to the council late Thursday, defended the missile attacks on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan as legitimate self-defense under the U.N. Charter.

He said Washington had obtained information that the organization of bin Laden was responsible for the Aug. 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "In particular, U.S. forces struck a facility being used to produce chemical weapons in Sudan and terrorist training and basing camps in Afghanistan," he said.

None of the letters from Sudan, the Arab League or the Islamic states mentioned the attack against Afghanistan. Nations are divided in support for the country's Taliban rulers. Afghanistan is represented at the United Nations by the previous anti-Taliban government.

Sudan's letter said, in part, "Lying has become a characteristic feature of the United States administration, but it has overstepped the limits by threatening world peace and targeting innocent people both in the developing countries and other countries, which is an affront to the human conscience," said the letter by Gobrial Roric, state secretary in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry.

Sudan says the El-Shifa factory, north of the capital Khartoum, made antibiotics for children, anti-malaria drugs and other pharmaceuticals for veterinary purposes.

Pakistan is lodging a complaint with the U.N. Security Council after a U.S. missile aimed at neighboring Afghanistan landed by mistake on its territory, the Foreign Ministry said today.

The discovery of an unexploded missile over the weekend supported Pakistan's claim that the United States violated its airspace, a ministry statement said.

Local officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the missile was found in a remote area Sunday and handed over to the military the same day, four days after U.S. missiles struck a suspected militant training camp in neighboring Afghanistan. They said it fell in Kharan, 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.

Pakistan had protested the presumed violation of its airspace in the U.S. attack and said earlier 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.

Meanwhile, the Cuban government condemned Sunday the U.S. airstrikes as an "arbitrary and abusive" use of Washington's military might which could provoke a cycle of violence.

Indian Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani said Sunday that U.S. missile strikes confirmed Indian fears that Afghanistan was being used as a base to train Kashmiri separatists.

"This only confirms what we have apprehended, suspected that they are being trained there," Advani told reporters in the northwestern Indian city of Jaipur.

GRAPHIC: Associated Press; A pregnant Sudanese women, center, marches among other members of a female civilian defense force today in Khartoum as Sudan mobilized demonstrations to protest the U.S. missile strike.

LOAD-DATE: August 26, 1998

SECTION: LE MONDE; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 496 words

HEADLINE: Sudan denies chemical weapons attack on rebels

BYLINE: Mouna Naim

BODY:
At a press conference on August 7, the Sudanese foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, denied accusations that the Khartoum government had used chemical weapons against guerrilla forces in the south of the country last month. He claimed that such charges were aimed at justifying in advance "a further aggression" against Sudan.

He said that Khartoum would accept a United Nations inquiry into the matter on condition the United States also accepted a UN inquiry into its bombing of the A1 Shifa medicines factory in the Sudanese capital in August 1998. The Americans used cruise missiles against the plant in retaliation for bomb attacks against their embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on the grounds, they claimed, that it manufactured a key component of the VX nerve gas and had connections with the Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden, the man behind the two bombings. Washington also froze funds held with the Bank of America by the factory's owner, Salaheddin Idriss, a Saudi businessman with no connections with any terrorist group. Washington never provided any evidence to back up its claim, and eight months later unfroze his accounts, thus implicitly admitting it had got the wrong man.

The fresh allegations against Khartoum have come from Colonel John Garang's Sudanese People's Liberation Army, the main rebel group in the south, and a Norwegian humanitarian organisation, Norsk Folkehjelp (NF), which has been active for some years in southern Sudan, where the civilian population has been the main victim of the civil war that has raged for the past 16 years.

NF said that its inquiries confirmed that the Sudanese government had used chemical weapons against the inhabitants of the towns of Lainya and Kaaya on July 23. It said that children and adults had coughed up blood, pregnant women had lost their babies, and many animals and birds had died.

The World Food Programme, which finances and organises, in conjunction with NGOs, the massive Operation Lifeline Sudan, has said it is taking the accusations seriously, particularly as three of its agents who had briefly visited the bombed area later suffered from diarrhoea, nose and eye irritations, and sneezing and coughing fits. The UN has said it will send a medical team to the area to verify the claims.

The accusations have come at a bad time for Sudan, which is already under pressure from Washington. Members of the US Congress, some of whom visited rebel-held areas in June, are calling for an air exclusion zone to be imposed on southern Sudan along the lines of the one in operation in Iraq.

Khartoum, which got widespread expressions of sympathy from Arab countries in August 1998 following the US bombing, has improved its image by rebuilding bridges even with countries once fiercely hostile to it, such as Kuwait. It recently asked the Arab League to help it resist the US campaign which, it claims, aims to "separate off the south of the country". August 10

LOAD-DATE: August 30, 1999

SECTION: International news

LENGTH: 306 words

HEADLINE: Sudan invites former US President Carter to investigate bombing

DATELINE: KHARTOUM, Sept 22

BODY:
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir invited former US president Jimmy Carter to visit a pharmaceutical plant destroyed in last month's US cruise missile attack, a local newspaper said Tuesday.

The invitation came as some US officials and figures, including Carter, cast doubt over the US decision to attack the Al-Shifa factory on August 20.

The Akhbar al-Saa newspaper did not say how or when the message to Carter was sent but it reported that Beshir also renewed a call for a UN fact-finding mission to be dispatched to Khartoum to investigate the bombing. Carter has called for an investigation into the attack on the factory, suggesting that a technical team inspect the remains of the plant and take samples of soil and building materials.

Washington said it carried out the attack, along with a simultaneous raid on suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the fatal August 7 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

US officials have linked the factory to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire they believe financed the east Africa embassy bombing, and have said the plant was manufacturing ingredients for a deadly nerve gas. Sudan has repeatedly denied the claim.

On Monday the New York Times reported that some top US officials now believe that the reasons for bombing the factory were not "convincing".

The United States has expressed opposition to demands by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) for a UN inquiry into the Sudan strike.

Acting OAU president Blaire Campaore, who is also the president of Burkina Faso, renewed the inquiry appeal Monday in a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York.

Carter visited Sudan in 1995 and secured a truce in the civil war between the Islamic-led government in Khartoum and rebels in southern Sudan.

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LOAD-DATE: September 22, 1998

SECTION: International news

LENGTH: 146 words

HEADLINE: OAU demands UN inquiry into US bombing in Sudan

DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, Sept 21

BODY:
The Organization of African Unity on Monday stepped up its demand for a UN investigation into the US bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum.

"Africa hopes that the UN Security Council will send an investigatory mission to Sudan following the US bombardment of the pharmaceutical facility in Khartoum," said Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore. Compaore, acting president of the OAU, spoke after US President Bill Clinton gave a speech to the UN General Assembly calling for a global mobilization against terrorism.

Washington launched a missile attack on August 20 against the factory as well as suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in retaliation for the fatal August 7 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Washington has expressed opposition to the OAU's demand for a UN inquiry into the Sudan strike.

ml/hh/sb

LOAD-DATE: September 21, 1998

SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 369 words

HEADLINE: Test for the US

BODY:
IF Sudan wants a serious inquiry into whether or not the Shifa pharmaceutical factory was also producing precursors for chemical weapons, it should get one. The Sudanese authorities maintain it was an innocent aspirin plant; the United States says it has compelling evidence it was not. If the Sudanese think they can prove that the factory had no covert purposes, they should be given a chance to do so. If indeed it had not, large political, legal and financial consequences would follow. The chances that there will be such an inquiry are, however, slender. The Security Council last week shrugged off the Sudanese request for an official United Nations inquiry, bowing to the US line that it would be pointless. Yet it surely does matter that where an action as cavalier as the destruction in peace time of a multimillion-dollar plant by cruise missile takes place, it should be demonstrated as conclusively as possible that the action was justified. That is especially the case when it could so easily have caused fatalities. If the Sudanese were to accept that experts could do their work without any hindrance, there seems no good reason to ignore their request. That it is not being seriously considered attests to the deterioration of international standards. A unilateral attack across international boundaries is in itself a departure from such standards. Saying that Washington's privately held evidence should be accepted as sufficient justification for it, even where the government of the country attacked is demanding an inquiry, is another. This does not mean that the Sudanese government is an innocent. It is a bad government that seized power in a military coup, which has tried to impose a fundamentalist way of life not accepted even by a majority of the country's northern population and which is resisted furiously by the non-Muslims of the south. It has played dubious games internationally. It could have been playing even more dangerous games by working on nerve gas for the Iraqis. If the Sudanese tried to cheat a properly constituted inquiry, that would tell its tale. But what if the US got it wrong? Surely it is worth some international effort to find out.

LOAD-DATE: September 17, 1998

SECTION: International news

LENGTH: 270 words

HEADLINE: IGAD backs Sudan request for UN inquiry into US bombing

DATELINE: KHARTOUM, Sept 5

BODY:
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional group of seven African nations, said Saturday it supports Sudan's request for a UN inquiry into the US bombardment of a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory.

Djibouti President Hassan Guled Aptidon, acting head of IGAD, said the group supports Sudan's request for the UN Security Council to launch an inquiry into US allegations that the Al-Shifa factory, destroyed August 20 by US cruise missiles, was manufacturing a chemical weapons ingredient. The United States attacked Al-Shifa, as well as terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, in reprisal for the August 7 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 257 dead.

The decision to target the factory was taken after a soil sample obtained clandestinely from a foreign national showed traces of a chemical known as EMPTA used to make VX nerve gas, US officials said.

US President Bill Clinton said Al-Shifa was linked to the "terrorist network" of Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden, who US intelligence believes masterminded the US embassy bombings.

Sudan maintains the factory manufactured only pharmaceutical products, primarily anti-malaria drugs and syrups for children.

The destruction of the factory, which supplied 50 percent of Sudan's medicine, has lead to an accute shortage of medicine in the country.

Both Sudan and Kenya are members of IGAD, along with Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia.

IGAD's primary goal is to broker a peace deal between the military government in Khartoum and the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.

mas/tm/mc

LOAD-DATE: September 05, 1998
 

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 8549 words

HEADLINE: NEWS CONFERENCE WITH MAHDI IBRAHIM MAHAMMAD, SUDANESE AMBASSADOR
TOPIC: U.S. BOMBING OF THE CHEMICAL PLANT
THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, DC

BODY:
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Good morning.
Well, I would like at the outset to welcome each and every one of you for the interest and concern you have shown by coming here this morning. And I would like to start by saying that as you all know, on August the 20th of this year, the United States launched a missile attack on a pharmaceutical factory north of Khartoum. I think we all know very much this fact.
The Sudan immediately condemned the U.S. for this uncalled-for aggression against the Sudan. It should not be taken as an aggression only against the pharmaceutical plant, but the most serious part is that it is aggression on the sovereignty, the sanctity, and the territorial integrity of the Sudan, a member of the United Nations. There are far-reaching consequences and ramifications to such an uncalled aggression.
Yesterday I formally advised the State Department that as a result of and in the strongest possible protest over this totally unjustified military invasion of Sudanese sovereignty, that my government was recalling its diplomats, including the ambassador, back to Khartoum.
It is our hope that this interruption in diplomatic exchange will be temporary. Given the recent part -- the recent past of treatment by the State Department to Sudan, we are not at all sure just how Sudan will be regarded in the future, even if the truth is revealed about this terrible incident.

Please let me make it clear that the people of Sudan admire and feel a natural closeness with the American people. The outpouring of expressions of sympathy, of regret, of flowers, telegrams, and phone calls our embassy received from American citizens in response to this bombing have further solidified the relation between our two people.
Yet this administration has accused Sudan of supporting international terrorism and harboring terrorists. I stand before the world to proclaim that these allegations are untrue and unsubstantiated. They clearly indicate a lack of understanding of existing conditions in my country and a general ignorance and (arrogative ?) regarding of Africa generally, unfortunately.
Since becoming ambassador to the United States from Africa's largest nation, I have attempted on numbers of occasions to arrange meetings with the assistant secretary of state for Africa, in her two capacities, when she was the senior adviser of the president for Africa in the National Security Council and later when she became the assistant secretary for Africa. Never had the assistant secretary taken the time to meet with me -- not as a matter of diplomatic courtesy and not even as an attempt to refute -- an opportunity for me to refute the highly defamatory analyses that were being published and perpetrated by the State Department regarding my country and my people. After finally securing a meeting with her yesterday, I told her that "it took a crisis -- bombing my country -- for me to get a meeting with you, Madame Secretary."
It is a difficult time for my country and a difficult situation to understand why the earth's greatest superpower would choose to conduct its affairs in such a condescending and heavy-handed manner toward the Sudan particularly.

It is difficult for my country to understand that. Unfortunately, this type of conduct has become the pattern for relations between the United States government and Sudan, if not in fact for all Africa and for the Islamic world. I will give you some examples.
Toward March last year, I delivered to the State Department a message from the president of Sudan to the president of the United States. The president, our president, requested in that letter that the two nations engage in open and cooperative dialogue aimed at resolving any differences that might have existed between our two governments. And namely, the message addressed the issue of peace, establishing peace in the Sudan; addressing the problems of neighborly relations and destabilization in the subregion, the issue of terrorism and the general issue of human rights.
Now understand this was a personal request from the head of state of one -- sovereign nation to another. It was communicated with the most sincere of intentions and meant to end an era of misinformation, disinformation, and open a time for cooperation and goodwill. President Clinton never afforded President Bashir with the courtesy of a response to that important letter.
Phased but not dissuaded by the rebuff, our government continued the policy of liberalizing our society, including a constitution provision for women's rights and the guarantee for their representation in our National Assembly. We signed a peace agreement -- we continued this program because we believe in it; it is our initiative toward our own people -- we signed a peace agreement with an overwhelming majority of the government's opposition in the SPLA -- six out of seven factions -- guaranteeing our southern states the right of national self-determination, to be internationally monitored; the freedom to establish their own laws and the freedom of religious participation. Further, we successfully integrated their leadership into the upper echelons of power in government in Sudan.
And we adopted by National Assembly vote, a national referendum, a national constitution as the law of our land, last June. By such constitutional guarantees, we have instituted multiparty political participation and pluralistic democracy. In short, we continued the work of building a democracy in our country.
Beyond our progress, in March of this year I delivered yet another message from my president to President Clinton on the eve of his trip to Africa, welcoming the visit to Africa and hoping that he will address adequately the issues of concerns of the Africans and will correct the relationship between Africa and the United States, and asking further for a more meaningful dialogue between the two countries. Same result; no response.

Then, in May of this year, I delivered a formal letter of invitation to a senior official in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offering to establish a joint effort between our two countries to see the possibilities, to explore them, of working together against international terrorism. We have already signed an agreement within the Arab League, with all the Arab countries, to fight terrorism in the region.
We regarded such a joined effort as potentially very effective, since we had previously cooperated with official U.S. requests regarding terrorism, specifically in this regard, when the U.S. government and Saudi Arabia asked in 1996 that we expel Osama bin Laden as a suspected terrorist -- we have not been handed with any specific accusations, actually, about that -- we arranged for his final departure from our country.
When the U.S. asked to liquidate bin Laden's financial holdings, we cooperated, although bin Laden came to the Sudan as an investor, and he is well known as someone who belongs to the largest investing company in construction in the entire Middle East, not only in Saudi Arabia. He came in that capacity, he engaged in agricultural projects, he engaged in building the road from Khartoum northward to Atbara. Every Sudanese knows about that. But despite the fact that he came as an investor, we took the decision of the concern of Saudi Arabia and the United States about that.
We found and captured an infamous terrorist, Carlos "The Jackal," who came to our country without invitation, with the Arab passport at a time when he knew that Sudan is not demanding a visa from any Arab passport holders.

And it wasn't only an Arab passport; it was even a diplomatic passport, and it took some time to discover him. But as soon as we did, we extradited him.
The terrorists in two occasions that hijacked Ethiopian airliners, we took them back. We surrendered the airliners, and we extradited the hijackers back to Ethiopia.
When presented with the international compacts on anti-terrorism, we became signatories to four of those, and we have been revising the others with the intention of signing them. And I think if you look around Sudan, you will find that very few countries were able in that part of the world to sign four of these. And further, we signed the international ban on the use of land mines, something that the United States has not yet done.
So we thought our offer of cooperation with the U.S. law enforcement officials would be welcomed, but after conferring with the administration, they politely declined our invitation. We knew it was because of the U.S. pressure on that institution. We found this attitude from Washington highly inconsistent with its public proclamations, but still we attempted cooperation.
In fact, when the United States has asked Sudan for assistance, we have given it. Following immediately the horrible U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which we immediately and vigorously condemned, we were requested to give access to Sudanese airspace to evacuate U.S. diplomatic personnel and citizens and to provide relief for those affected by the unfortunate bombing. We complied, regarding it simply as the humanitarian thing to do, the right humanitarian thing to do. And when the United States wanted continuing overflight permits for that same purpose, we agreed, and we gave that license.

Now we are very skeptical and suspicious whether that license for roaming the skies of Sudan became a reason for bombing the pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum.
When the U.S. State Department in its annual report accused Sudan of a variety of unfounded and unjustified human rights violations, strangely reminiscent of SPLA propaganda, even though offended we made every effort to explain actual facts and circumstances in our country. And I think every one of you is aware, when there is a conflict that extended for almost 30 years intermittently, of conflict and war and tribes fighting each other, any war anywhere in the world is bound to bring about human rights violations.
Specifically, on our occasion we invited the State -- on four occasions we invited the State Department's Committee on Religious Freedom to visit the Sudan, to meet whomever they wanted to meet and to go wherever they want to go, in order to be able to collect firsthand information about the situation regarding religious freedom in the country, an offer no other country made. And in one of these three invitations I went personally to the State Department, and I met with the religious freedom committee. And its chairman was there, the assistant secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. And I invited them personally. That was the fourth time. The result is declining to allow members of this committee on religious freedom to go and see the Sudan.
The United States State Department has steadfastly refused to begin any open high level or low level, much less friendly, dialogue of real meaning with the Sudan. There was a dialogue. For some time it was successful last year, in August, to start seeing the embassy fully staffed in Khartoum.

That was in August last year. And by the end of September that same year, that dialogue came to a halt, and the whole movement of the U.S. embassy back to Khartoum was frozen.
There is a kind of dialogue, but it looks like we were speaking from different levels at different wavelengths unfortunately. So when a small gathering of officials inside the United States government thought or concocted that it had a problem inside Sudan, rather than addressing it in what could have been established and effective diplomatic channels, they instead organized a strike team and sent Tomahawk missiles soaring into our capital, killing and maiming innocent civilians and destroying private property. Unfortunately, that property is food processing and medicines desperately needed for our people in the country generally, and in the famine-stricken South, particularly. It was a shameful and, we think ultimately, self- defeating thing to do.
What possible justification could these officials have had in mind when they disregarded every conventional form of legitimate diplomacy and opted for a Wild West shoot-first-boys and ask- questions-later philosophy? Regrettably, for the U.S. government, it is time now for the questions, time unfortunately after loss of life and limb, property and prospects. All the United States had to do -- all the United States administration had to do, if they thought there was a problem at the Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant, was to advise us.

After all, immediately following the bombing of the two American embassies in Kenya and Dar es Salaam, they engaged in consulting and advising us and asking for permission for their flights to go over the Sudan. That was possible also, before bombing the Sudan -- to engage in dialogue, to alert us about their concern about this facility. All the United States had to do, if they thought there was a problem at the Shifa pharmaceutical plant, was to advise us. We would have responded, just as we did in the case of bin Laden or Carlos or the overflights or the fight against terrorism generally. We would have agreed to cooperate.
And if we hadn't agreed to cooperate -- and that is the right of any sovereign state -- if we haven't, the State Department has the course, the natural, civilized course, of going to the U.N., to the Security Council, demanding an investigation. That is the natural, civilized course of way to do (sic).
Unfortunately, the U.S. government did neither. Instead, they bombed Sudan.
I want you to know that this plant was not manufacturing chemical weapons for terrorists. To believe that it was is to strain credibility beyond its limits. It was engaged in manufacturing human and veterinary medicine, and was an approved supplier of export medicine under the U.N.'s food for oil program. And the U.N. licensed the Sudan to send medicine under that program, under the supervision of the U.N., to Iraq. And the U.S. is part of the U.N., particularly supervising everything that goes to Iraq or comes out of it.
The plant was designed by Henry Jobe, the United States firm MSD Pharmaceutical Company. He's an American. He designed this plant. And when asked by the Observer of Britain, he said, "This plant was never designed for dual purposes. It was simply for producing medicine." He is here in this country. He can be revised (sic) about that.
The plant was built, equipped, and managed for four years by a British citizen, Tom Carnaffin. He was also interviewed by the British media, and he said it very clearly, "I know very intimately this plant.

It just does not lend itself to produce chemical weapons. It doesn't have the capacity." The technology of that plant doesn't allow to do so. Simply. The two Jordanians who were part of the management of this plant, part of the process of building it, they said the same -- from Jordan. Both men have asserted that the facility was neither designed for nor lent itself to the formation of the chemical weapon precursors as charged by the U.S. -- by the U.S. government.
In the aftermath of the attack, thousands of people have walked over and inspected, handled the remains, and breathed the air at the plant site. Immediately following the bombing, thousands of them -- and this continued. And all the media, reporters -- and there were about 90 international networks in Sudan following that bombing. They all went to the facility, and they investigated and they went around it. And none have suffered in any way from chemical reaction or exposure to a alleged harmful substances.
You should be aware also that the British media has reported that the United States government conducted secret high-altitude surveillance and sampling immediately prior to the attacks, and the results were negative. You can read that in the Guardian, the Observer, and the Independent -- (word inaudible). And they are not cousins to the Sudan, as you know. Everyone knows that this facility is just a sitting duck, it is there to be seen, to be surveyed, to be investigated. It is not like a terrorist who can just jump in the jungles of Africa or take an airliner from Kenya to Pakistan in his way to Afghanistan. No! This facility cannot do that. It is there. A serious and genuine attempt to investigate it was possible by all measures.
You should be aware, also, that the reality is there were no chemical weapon activities being conducted at the Shifa pharmaceutical plant, or any other plant in Sudan, for that matter.

This flimsy attempt by the U.S. administration to cover up a terribly embarrassing incident with fabrications on top of allegations and so- called compelling evidence, continuous assertions of compelling evidence, is disgraceful and in no way compliments the proud heritage of American diplomacy in the past.
The so-called soil sampling conducted at the plant and cited as the compelling evidence of chemical precursors were either nonexistent or terribly incorrect, unfortunately. It has been suggested that perhaps the sample was contaminated with or mistaken for a common herbicide. I will leave it to others to speculate on the source of this strike team's compelling evidence. But regardless, when faced with growing international skepticism over the propriety of their action, the proper course for the United States government would seem to have been agreement for second opinion validation (of) its intelligence. Instead, they have opposed the United Nations initiative designed to confirm or deny the existence of soil contamination and have scoffed at our pursuit of an independent evaluation. This is unbelievable.
We speak about the civilized world, about the U.N. being the international organization charged with problems of international security and peace around the world. When a country is bombed and immediately goes to the U.N. and asks for an inquiry, an independent, objective, fair inquiry about the nature of this facility, why shouldn't the U.N. immediately accept that? That is its responsibility if it is to be respected by the international community. Why should the U.S. hide away from this? Why should it not come forward, completely confident with its intelligence, and say yes, we are confident about our information, but an investigation from the U.N. is warranted. Let us do it, and let us see the reality and the nature of this facility. It's amazing that neither the U.N. nor the U.S. has come immediately forward to accept a legitimate request for investigation about the nature of this facility.

Well, such actions beg the question -- why the United States government, stonewalling an open inquiry into actions it has described as "necessary for the self-defense" of their country. Why?
Indeed, there has been loss of life, of industry, loss of desperately needed medicines for our people and now an independent loss of American integrity if an answer is not forthcoming. There is a moral imperative for the United States government to be open with its own people and the citizens of this globe, and if shown to be mistaken, to take apologetic and corrective actions for the monumental misdeed.
So far it has refused. Fortunately, in this great land, there is a system of checks and balances on the exercise and abuse of power. Accordingly, this week indeed I intend to formally ask the leaders of the U.S. Congress to open a fair and impartial investigation into this international incident, to conduct a comprehensive review of American State Department policy towards Sudan and its neighbors and this incident in particular.
I will ask them to block any attempt by the U.S. administration to stop the United Nations inquiry into the Khartoum event. That is only legitimate. If the U.S. has evidence, then it should produce it to its people and to the world; including the dispatch of a scientific analysis team to test the Shifa plant site for any traces of chemical weapons precursors. And I will ask them to require on-site State Department review of the human-rights environment in the Sudan.

And if such congressional inquiry provides simple justification, ample justification, as I expect it to, I will then call on the Congress to provide the leadership in extending reparations to the injured parties for the awful toll of this administration's actions.
Sudan wishes open and honest relations with the United States of America. These circumstances, as unfortunate as they are, could prove to be the beginning. And in the normal and ordinary course of life, we have seen that it takes a crisis between two countries to open the real channels of dialogue and to open a new way for relationships.
Thank you. I am ready to respond to your questions. (Applause.)
Q Here you are the only representative of any government or minority. Who will stand here and defend the legitimate, bona fide businessmen? Whereas bin Laden himself said on American TV that he was part of what happened in Somalia and that he will be after the United States interests wherever they go. I think you are the only -- the first person who also defends Carlos the Jackal, who himself -- you defended him as an innocent visitor to your country, whereas the man himself confessed in the trial in France that he was involved in terrorism. And after all this you say that why would the United States not talk to us? And if you are talking like this about these two men, I wonder why they didn't consult with you.
My second question is --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Let it be one, please, so that we give the opportunity.
Unfortunately, my friend, you missed it all. I did not defend bin Laden, I did not defend Carlos. I just said bin Laden belongs to a family that is well known as the largest constructing contractors in the Middle East. And when he visited Sudan, he visited it in this capacity. And he engaged in agricultural and road construction processes in the country. But despite that, and without being provided with evidence from the U.S., despite that, because of the U.S. and the Saudi government wanted bin Laden to be outside the country, we were able to send bin Laden outside the country.

This is what I'm saying.
And as far as the Jackal, I spoke that the Jackal came to the Sudan without invitation. And he came from an Arab country with an Arab passport, a diplomatic passport. We knew nothing about him. At the time Sudan was not asking a visa from Arab-holding passport -- Arab passport holders. He came in that capacity. But as soon as we were able to apprehend him, we extradited him to France. You missed it all, my friend, unfortunately.
Yes?
Q Yes. Mr. Ambassador, Bill Jones from Executive Intelligence Review. As you indicated in your comments, there has been a rather intense debate within the Clinton administration over its policy to Sudan, where some people were inclined to work for cooperation and others were obviously, it seems, very adamantly opposed.
I wonder if you can say why -- any motivations and you would see why there is so much of an antipathy among some leading U.S. officials to Sudan's -- (off mike) -- and secondly, if you could comment --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Can we leave the second until we see that opportunity? I have to be just fair.
I think -- I don't really know why some administrators and officials in the U.S. government are harboring such hostility against the Sudan.
The obvious thing is that Sudan is an Islamic country, with a system of government that is trying to revive the values of society, and a country that is pursuing a very independent course politically and economically. We are trying to assert our national identity -- something that we have failed to do in the last three decades before this government. This extremely independent course and this revival of values in the Sudan is a source of disturbance to some who hate Islamic countries and hate the Islamic world, unfortunately.
And I think this is one of the reasons that can easily be cited, because now we can see that most of these actions are directed toward Muslim countries -- one by one, one after the other, countries branded as "terrorist," countries bombed, countries sanctioned. Most of them, 90 percent of them, are Islamic countries. And unfortunately, this is -- this may be part of it. I think the other part may be the U.S. government -- and I'm not saying the U.S. people, because I have known U.S. citizens in this country. I came here. I had a master's in public communication. I went -- I visited almost -- most of the states of this country. The American people are very friendly people. They are open. They are casual. They are fair-minded.

But the administration, unfortunately, knowing the might -- the political and military might available to it, is ready to use it against smaller countries that doesn't have the capacity to retaliate, particularly after the demise of the Soviet Union. And unfortunately, they are under the illusion that might is right. But this is not the case. Might is not right.
And so some time they hit Sudan in order to give a less0n to the others, just to succumb and to surrender. Unfortunately, this is not correct. Is not correct. And I know that the American people, when they know that their government is engaged in bullying countries, it will not be perceived positively. And I have seen the American people extremely suspicious and questioning the behavior of the U.S. government by bombing this facility in the Sudan. It has raised questions all over the U.S., and I appreciate very much the international media and the American media particularly. They have questioned the legitimacy of this action; that is something that I do commend and I do appreciate.
Yes?
Q Mr. Ambassador, there were some reports that there was some negotiation between you and the United States for the last week and a half, two weeks, for the United States to apologize and to have -- you want a public apology, they were supposed to have an apology. Does this mean that you call today and give announcement that these negotiations through a third country collapsed? And is it true that they proposed a private apology and you rejected? You want that public apology?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I think what we want is that the United States government should acknowledge that it committed an error -- a serious one. The U.S. government has always been asking other governments to apologize when they make mistakes, to acknowledge that they made mistakes. Now this is a real test for the U.S. government to be faithful to the declared principles by also acknowledging that it made a serious error against the people of the Sudan. And if that is done, it will open all the pages of establishing a proper and a correct relationship between our two countries.
Q Do you have any communication that they are considering -- (off mike)?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I don't know at this point in time. Q (Off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yes?
Q Ambassador could you tell us a little bit more about your meeting yesterday with Susan Rice? What -- we know what you brought to the table.

What did she bring to the table? What did she tell you?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I don't want to go into divulging what was there between us. But part of this discussion was part of what happened between (me ?) -- in that meeting.
Q But part of which discussion, I am sorry?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: What I said here.
Yes?
Q Yes. I don't think the U.S. government is against Islam. I think it's -- the problem is that your government is representing only 2 percent of the population, and it's the way it's using Islam. Now in the light of your emotional talk here, are you going to advise your government to stop the altitude bombing of the civilians in the Labor Party?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: First of all, unfortunately, you know very little about your country. You have been far away removed from the reality and the fact of what's happening in the Sudan.
From where did you get the 2 percent? Just an improvised -- you see, this has nothing to do with what (happened ?).
Q (Off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: This has nothing to do with what happened in the Sudan. If you are referring to the Islamic Charter Front, then you are also mistaken because I was an elected member of that parliament. And the Islamic Charter Front, as one of the parties of the Sudan, at the time got 20 percent of the voters in the Sudan. So you are mistaken at all levels.
I was an elected member. And the Islamic Charter had 51 seats, 51 members of parliament, in the 1986 elections under the democratic government. This is one.
If you speak about what is happening today, this government ran an election for presidential and parliamentary -- parliamentary and presidential elections in 1986 -- 1996. The turnover (sic) of voters was 72.6 percent of the people who are eligible. You have nothing to say about that. The government has just passed the permanent constitution, and the result was 76 percent of the people of the Sudanese voted. And 92 percent of those who voted, they supported the permanent constitution that was passed recently. What you say is baseless, unfortunately.
Q Mr. Ambassador, does your government consider Osama bin Laden to be a terrorist?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: We don't know. This is what the American government is saying. It has to prove to the world. Even when the American government tried to bring this to the attention of the government of Sudan, they never submitted to us any specific accusations about that.
You read the media now. Until now, the U.S. did not hold Osama bin Laden responsible for this or that -- "suspect, suspect." And I think you are in a civilized world. We have to know, until you prove that this particular person is guilty with this or that accusation; until it is proved, he remains innocent. These are the principles that all the world share.
There are accusations against him.

We have never known him, when he was in the Sudan, as a terrorist because he came and worked in our country. And anyone who is objective enough could go and see that there is a road that has been built, for the first time in the history of Sudan, out of Khartoum to Akbra (ph). This is the capacity we knew the man.
But when we got these suspicions and these accusations, we acted upon them because we don't like our country to be a haven for terrorists. We have done everything we can; we are trying to do everything we could. The Sudan has never engaged in any act of terrorism; it's accusations.
Q If I may, my name is Anita (Parlow ?). I'm a freelance journalist, and two years back I wrote a report for Human Rights Watch Africa on Sudan, and I spent some time in both the north and the south. And you said a number of complex things here. The most interesting to me was the -- taking a crisis between two countries in order to engage in a dialogue. And I guess the question becomes, given the crisis situation, what is in fact that one is willing to do to initiate such a dialogue, and you said a number of complex things.
If I may, an interview with Hassan al-Turabi two years back, he indicated that in Khartoum were several organizations -- he named them -- such as Hezbollah, Hamas and other organizations who were known to be engaging in activities against sitting and existing governments. He also denied the fact that there were human rights violations going on at that time in the north of Sudan and wasn't as familiar with the war in the south as one might have hoped. All of these elements have been discussed within the framework of the United Nations, they're have been various levels of dialogue or lack of same, as you pointed out in your comments, between the U.S. government and the government of Sudan.
The question is, within the framework of a bombing under equally questionable circumstances in terms of the target, indeed, this does open up a question for dialogue, I wonder rather than everybody hunkering down in the corners and basically allowing the situation to continue more or less as it is -- and may I parenthetically say I agree with the gentleman who indicated that perhaps this is not an attack against Islam but some other dimensions as well. Mr. Turabi did indicate some appreciation for the approaches that the --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Do you want to ask a question, because I don't think this is -- Q So the question is if, for example, the U.S. would stop short of a direct apology, would agree, for example, to reconstruct a medical facility, a facility of producing very necessary medications and chemicals for persons who, as you know, are in need of economic support as well, would this be viewed as a step and a direction of shifting the dialogue and the architecture of the conversation that has been going on?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Certainly. Certainly, because when you make an error of that nature you need also to compensate the people because this is a private facility. The owners of this facility is not governmental.

This is a private facility. And the owner in last March came to another businessman. It had nothing to do with --
Q So if I understand properly is that the words "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" are perhaps not as important as an action which would face the problem that has occurred and act in such a way to benefit the people of Sudan?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I think the U.S. government knows what to do in these cases. (Laughs.)
Now -- .
Q And does bin Laden have any assets in Sudan. And if this is the case, are you planning to -- (inaudible)?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Is what?
Q Any assets? Bin Laden have any assets in Sudan? And the second question, you mentioned the Tomahawk strike. Does the Sudanese government withdraw its claims that there were military aircraft that crossed neighboring countries that were used in the attack against the factory?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I think -- I don't think this is a question now, whether they attacked the Sudan with aircraft or with this Tomahawk missile. It is the same. It is aggression, unwarranted. There was a different course that could be taken regarding this.
Q This may be, but is that --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: So whether it is an aircraft or a missile, this is the focus of the attention that -- the bombing itself is what we are focusing on.
Q Is that an answer?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yes.
Q My name is -- (inaudible) -- I'm one of the representatives of the (NBA ?) in Washington DC. I would like to address only one question to Mr. Mahdi. The Sudanese government keep asking about forming a team, inspection team to go in Sudan and inspect the factory and get an evidence of that accusation by the government of the United States. I would like to address this question: Will the Sudanese government allow this team to inspect the terrorist camps Algerians, Egyptians and so on, and the other factories in Kafouri (sp), south of Khartoum, the chemical labs, and all the other sites in Sudan or not? Thank you.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well -- (laughs) -- it's very unfortunate that a Sudanese would say that. But we have invited the U.S. government in a president -- from the president of Sudan to the president of this country to send a team of the counter-terrorism department to work jointly with the government of Sudan to see all these accusations about terrorist camps or terrorist individuals in the Sudan. This was sent in February '97.

And unfortunately they haven't responded. We haven't received any response to that.
I said this here. And we have invited the FBI to come and work jointly with the Sudanese to see if there are camps or there are terrorists in the Sudan. And they declined. I have here the file of all the letters, all these letters, and the response to them on all of -- (those, see ?). If there are camps in the Sudan or terrorists in the Sudan, we would have never engaged in a very serious kind of dialogue; a message from the president of the Sudan to the president of the United States or from the head of the security organ in the Sudan to the FBI in this country; we would have never done so if it is not that clear -- (inaudible).
Q What about the chemical factories?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: You speak about chemical factories out of your own imagination unfortunately. You have been in this country for the last eight or nine years. How do you speak about that? You want to continue a discourse --
Q (Off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: -- of allegations, unfortunately?
Q And I have to come in there.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: We are now inviting the U.N. --
Q What about the fact that is owned by Osama bin Laden? you know, the munition and small-arm factory? Because of that, too.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: This is the kind of accusations of the opposition, which is unsubstantiated. It doesn't -- evidence, what is the evidence? Now I am asking the U.N. -- this is the international organization that is supposed to deal with these things -- I am asking them formally to send a team of experts to investigate this factory, which has been --
Q (Off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I am not going to say them, "Come and look into my country."

Q Why don't --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: You usually speak about a specific incident.
This is not a dialogue between me and you. You ask your questions; you have to remain silent until we respond to you.
This is a specific incident. The U.S. claims that this is a -- not a pharmaceutical plant; it is a chemical weapon plant, and they bombed it because of that reason. This is the focus of the attention of the world and of the Sudan. We are asking the U.N., and we are asking the Congress of this country, what more of openness do you expect from a government more than that?
Yes?
Q Mr. Ambassador, you are trying to hide the record of human- rights violations in the Sudan. And this has been clear from all the international organizations, which condemned Sudan several times, more than one or two times. The government has very bad relations --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Do you want to ask a question? If you want to ask a question, go and ask the question.
Q I'll ask a question. You are trying to use this as a scapegoat or a pretext to clean your -- the ugly record of your government in human-rights violations; the effort in the -- (inaudible) -- in southern Sudan, the genocide.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: This is not a question.

Q -- what do you -- (off mike) --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: This is not a question. Please, anyone has a question?
Q -- the investigation of --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Please. No, no, this is not a question --
Q Let me complete my question. How come --
MODERATOR (?): There are some --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: No, no, no. You make your own platform --
Q I will ask you a question --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: You make your own platform and then you speak about it.
Q (Off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: I know you. I have given you --
Q Let me ask you a question.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: -- and I know very well that you are an element of opposition, despite the fact that I gave you -- I gave that gentleman -- and I know he's an element of the Sudanese opposition.
Q Let me ask you a question. Going back --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: I am so open. I am ready to answer questions. But I am not ready for this kind of dialogue.
Q Your -- the investigation has been --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Please.
Q -- why did you try to cover only Sudan --
Q I have a question.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yes? Q (Affiliation and name off mike.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Go ahead, (inaudible name).
Q I'm a bit confused. You say your government is recalling all Sudanese diplomats from Washington.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yeah.
Q It seemed to me I recall an announcement of -- a similar announcement about 10 days ago. Is what you're saying this morning something new?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: No, just I'm effecting it, because as an ambassador I wasn't here when this incident took place; I was back in Khartoum. And now I have come to pass a message to the -- formally to the government of the U.S. and then to do this process of arranging the comeback of my diplomats and myself back to Khartoum.
Q And you will consult with members of Congress before you leave?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yeah.
Q Okay.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Somebody new? Yes?
Q My question to Mr. Ambassador: Would you please help me to understand why our government, the Sudanese government, they just try to defend themselves like somebody act as if commit crimes. What's wrong with that if we have capability or ability to make chemical weapons? What's wrong with that? Everybody have it. USA -- they have it. Western countries -- they have it. India -- they have it. Israel -- they have it. India -- recently they test it, publicly. Everybody see it. What's wrong with that?
Everybody knows there is a double standard of policy from USA government. Everybody knows there is unfair dealing, unfair play going on.
So what's wrong with that? We didn't see any USA government -- they take any concrete steps to prevent that. So why we have to defend ourselves? Why it's work here and it's not work there? Why if we have ability or capability to do it, for our own safety, our own defense -- what's wrong with that?
I've just -- we don't -- time, it could be invested, or it could be wasted. We don't have to waste our time. Everybody knows what's going on -- (inaudible). There is double standard policy. The USA -- they (flaunt that ?) in their foreign policy like somebody that's tried to pin the jello against the wall.

There is unfair dealing going on, everybody knows that. We don't have to waste our time to explain to the people why concerning to -- if bin Laden, if he is terrorist inside of Sudanese government, who support brought (it to light ?)? U.S. State Department used to support him and they used to back him financially during the former Soviet Union. He wasn't some terrorist at that time, he wasn't a terrorist at that time. Since when he would become terrorist? So that's kind of double standard.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Do you have a question? What is your question?
Q My question why it's war here and it's not war there?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Okay, the question --
Q (Inaudible.)
AMB. MAHAMMAD: It's enough. It's enough.
I think -- I understand that kind of argument, that any country in the world has a right like other countries has, to have their factories -- (word inaudible) -- whatever.
But the case in the Sudan is they are accusing a pharmaceutical plant that it is producing chemical weapons, which is not right. This is the case why we are trying to bring to the attention of the world that this accusation is not true. And we are ready to be investigated. We stand open before the U.N. to send a team to do that. This is the case.
But in as far as chemical weapons all over the world, you are right. And the argument -- for the sake of argument, we can go further by saying suppose there is a chemical weapon in this country or that country, chemical weapon plant, is the right procedure that a country immediately engage in destroying a chemical weapon in somebody else's country, even if there is a chemical weapons plant? That is not the right procedure. The right procedure is you speak with the government and you show your concern and you try to seek their cooperation. If you fail, you go to the U.N. Security Council and you ask an investigation. That is the right procedure, even if it is a chemical weapons plant. But in our case, it is not a chemical weapons plant and we are ready to prove that, and we want the U.N. to come and do it.

Yes?
Q Mr. Ambassador, for the sake of the American public, could you be a little more descriptive about what has been referred to in the media as collateral damage? And would you welcome a U.S. citizen fact-finding group to come to your country?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Sure. Sure. U.S. citizens, U.S. Congress. This is -- above all, this is a United States institution, the U.S. Congress. I am going to invite them to come and see by themselves and to send a team for that.
Yes?
Q Are you planning to pursue any methods through the World Court or such international mechanisms?

AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yes. We are -- yeah, we are filing a complaint to the International Court of Justice in The Hague about this.
Q Can you elaborate, what do you seek to pursue there? Or what are you --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Yeah, because first of all, the aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country. The charter of the U.N. does not allow that for any country, unilaterally, without consulting and the U.N. Security Council accepts and says yes on all this. And we have to go to the International Court in order to see because these are some of the implications, which are very serious implications to the sovereignty of every country. Tomorrow the U.S. government is going to be against this country or that country, and it immediately is going to bomb you without consulting the U.N. or the Security Council, unilaterally, because it accuses you, and it passes a decision and the government, and it implements this and all that. This is going to be chaos in the world if this allowed, unfortunately.
Yes?
Q Can I ask you if you're not putting the -- Sudan is not put at a disadvantage by sort of severing your relations -- (inaudible). Don't you get food assistance and that kind of thing from the United States? Isn't that somehow put in there for you by the U.S.?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: No, we are not severing the relations. We are just recalling the diplomats as a strong protest to this behavior of the U.S. government.
Q But don't you put yourself at a disadvantage? Doesn't that make the communications difficult -- (inaudible) -- difficult for you to get a message -- (inaudible) -- aren't you sort of degrading your relations with the U.S.?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, that probability is there, unfortunately. But there are ways and means that governments can contact each other and conduct such a kind of diplomacy.
Yes?
Q So are you suggesting that it is possible that chemical weapons are being manufactured at other plants in your country?

AMB. MAHAMMAD: I beg your pardon?
Q Is it possible that chemical weapons are being manufactured at other plants?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: No. No. We are not interested in that. What -- what --
Q Is it possible?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: What is possible?
Q That chemical weapons are being manufactured at plants other than the one that was --
AMB. MAHAMMAD: In Sudan?
Q Yes, in the Sudan
AMB. MAHAMMAD: No. No. I mentioned this here in this presentation. For that matter, we are not producing any chemical weapons in any part of the Sudan.
Q How do you know -- when did you know bin Laden was a terrorist or his cause was terrorism -- (inaudible) -- in Sudan?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Because an individual can come to the Sudan. This is 2.5 million square kilometers with nine African neighbors, with 1.1 million refugees, with 500 tribes, with a degree of illiteracy that amounts to 80 percent, with the problems of communication and transportation.

This is a huge country. Carlos was able to go into France and to kill people and to leave France without being caught by France, with all its might, with the small size of its country, with the borders that are well kept. France. He was able to go into Vienna and to take all the ministers of oil as hostages and then he left Austria. That's a small country, with all its might -- (scattered applause) -- without being caught in all that.
Yes?
Q (Off mike) -- I offer the ambassador the question, have you spoken with the United Nations -- have you spoken with any of the United Nations officials about the issue of the League of Nations which was destroyed because of this? Do you think that the United Nations would survive if unjustice is done and the United States should -- (inaudible)? What do you think about -- (off mike).
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, I know that if might is always used as a means of resolving differences, difficulties between countries, the world will be reduced to chaos and anarchy and I hope that the U.S. government will mind very much that it is extremely important for the superpower of the world to be an example to the outer world, and if there is --
We are against terrorism in all its forms, from an individual, from groups, and from governments, as well. And terrorizing a country like Sudan by bombing it in this manner is an act of terrorism, unfortunately. We hope that the world will take this incident very seriously and try to address adequately its ramifications and its far- reaching effects.
Q Do you think that there would have been a bombing of the factory if there had been no problem with Monica Lewinsky in the States?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Well, to tell you frankly, I have been -- I didn't see the film "Wag the Dog," but I have been approached by many Americans that came back and telling me about this film and all that, you see. But unfortunately, I don't want to go into American politics, but I hope that this is not the case.

Q Yes, I'm from -- (name inaudible) -- newspaper which protested the bombing of Sudan and the attack against the sovereignty of your nation. My question is, what has been the response of the people in Sudan? I know there is -- (off mike). Are the people on the different sides united in protesting this attack by the U.S. government?
AMB. MAHAMMAD: That's a very good question; I should have addressed it adequately earlier. In fact, the response was immediate from Sudanese all over the country, I don't say only in the 26 states of the Sudan, in all the major cities in the Sudan there were demonstrations; tens of thousands went to demonstrations all over the country. And the same response from the entire world, from Indonesia, even inside the U.S., in all the Arab countries, in all the Islamic countries, in many African countries. The Arab League condemned in the strongest form, which is the institution representing all the Arab governments -- condemned in the strongest form this. The OAU did. And we are expecting the NAM meeting in South Africa will come also the same. There was a widespread support. And as I said earlier, Americans, ordinary Americans they contacted us, they sent flowers to the embassy, they regretted what happened from their government. Ordinary Americans, they did that because the ordinary American doesn't like to see his government bullying other countries in this manner.
Unfortunately, this kind of bombing will just unleash emotions and feelings among the people in the world against the U.S. government and the U.S. people, while the U.S. people and cities have nothing to do with this. It's a wrong policy from the administration, particularly in this incident. I hope that this kind of behavior will come to an end.
Q Thank you.
AMB. MAHAMMAD: Thank you.
END

LOAD-DATE: September 3, 1998
 

SECTION: The Guardian Features Page; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 426 words

HEADLINE: Leading article: Test the US;
Sudan should have its inquiry

BODY:
IF Sudan wants a serious inquiry into whether or not the Shifa pharmaceutical factory was also producing precursors for chemical weapons, it should get one. The Sudanese authorities maintain it was an innocent aspirin plant, the Americans say they have compelling evidence it was not. If the Sudanese think they can prove that the factory had no covert purposes, they should be given a chance to do so. If indeed it had not, large political, legal and financial consequences would follow. The chances that there will be such an inquiry are, however, slender. The Security Council on Monday shrugged off the Sudanese request for an official UN inquiry, bowing to the American line that it would be pointless. Yet it surely does matter that where an action as cavalier as the destruction in peacetime of a multimillion-dollar plant by cruise missile takes place, it should be demonstrated as conclusively as possible that the action was justified. That is especially the case when it could so easily have caused fatalities. The United Nations has rightly despatched inspectors to Iraq to investigate sites which may have been used, or may still be being used, to produce weapons of mass destruction. Their expertise is such that, even where only scraps remain, they have often been able to determine what deadly materials were being produced long after operations had ceased. If the Sudanese were to accept that experts could do their work without any hindrance, there seems no good reason to ignore their request. That it is not being seriously considered attests to the deterioration of international standards. A unilateral attack across international boundaries is in itself a departure from such standards. Saying that America's privately held evidence should be accepted as sufficient justification for it, even where the government of the country attacked is demanding an inquiry, is another. This does not mean that the Sudanese government is an innocent. It is a bad government which seized power in a military coup, which has tried to impose a fundamentalist way of life not accepted even by a majority of the country's northern population and which is resisted furiously by the non -Muslims of the south. It has played dubious games internationally. It could have been playing even more dangerous games by working on nerve gas for the Iraqis. If the Sudanese tried to cheat a properly constituted inquiry, that would tell its tale. But what if the Americans got it wrong ? Surely it is worth some international effort to find out.
 
 

LOAD-DATE: August 26, 1998
 

SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 179 words

HEADLINE: Sudan calls for Security Council meeting on U.S. strikes

DATELINE: New York

BODY:
 

In a letter published Sunday in New York, Sudan has accused the United States of practising the "law of the jungle" with its attack on a pharmaceuticals factory in Khartoum in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

The letter, received in Arabic, calls for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. A translation into English was released by the U.N. in New York.

The letter, signed by Gobrial Roric, minister of state in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry, reiterated that the factory that was largely destroyed had been for making human and veterinary medicines.

It said U.S. allegations that the factory in reality belonged to Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of heading a major terrorist network, were absolutely wrong. It said Washington could have no evidence to prove such a claim.

The chairmen of the Arab and Islamic groups at the U.N. have also written to Danilo Turk, this month's Security Council president, supporting the Sudanese call for an emergency session and a U.N. inquiry. dpa jbp

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1998