SUDAN: Opposition Divided Over U.S. Decision to Withdraw Envoys

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 2 1996 (IPS) - Sudanese opposition groups here are divided over Washington’s decision to withdraw its diplomats from the northeast African country. While some welcome it, others feel the U.S. government should take tougher action against Khartoum.

“We don’t think it is enough for the United States to withdraw its diplomats from Khartoum,” Peter Sule of the rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Army-United (SPLA-United) told IPS Friday.

The U.S. decision came on the heels of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Sudan’s government to turn over three men suspected of involvement in a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia last June.

The Security Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to condemn the assassination bid, which Ethiopian investigators have blamed on an extremist Islamic group, and called on Khartoum to hand over the suspects, whom Ethiopian officials believe escaped to Sudan shortly after the incident.

Sudan has an extradition treaty with Ethiopia, but has thus far refused to turn over the suspects.

The Council also asked Sudan to desist from “assisting, supporting and facilitating terrorist activities and from giving shelter and sanctuaries to terrorist elements.”

Sudan’s government has described the resolution as part of an international plot against it. It also appeared uneasy over Washington’s move. State-run ‘Radio Omdurman’, monitored here Friday, urged the United States to reconsider its decision and pledged full support for foreign embassies.

It said Sudan “will continue to provide security to all diplomats, especially Americans.”

Sule, whose group is a splinter group of the SPLA, said “the withdrawal will give the green light to the Islamic fundamentalist government in Khartoum to support, sponsor and provide haven to terrorists around the world without it being checked”.

“I think the best thing would be for the United States to impose economic sanctions and an embargo on trade and international financial credits in order to speed up the overthrow of the government in Khartoum,” he said.

He added that he believed the Sudanese government would collapse only when Washington changed its policy and started providing military assistance to the various rebel factions fighting the regime of head of state Lt. Gen. Omar al Bashir.

Washington, apparently disenchanted with factional fighting among the rebels — whose demands range from autonomy to independence for non-Muslim Southern Sudan from the Muslim north — appears to have distanced itself from the SPLA, which was weakened by a 1991 split.

However, unconfirmed reports have it that the United States is channeling assistance through Uganda and Eritrea to the mainstream SPLA faction, led by U.S.-educated agroeconomist Colonel John Garang.

While SPLA-United was dissatisfied with the U.S. move to withdraw its diplomats, the Southern Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM), another rebel group, welcomed it.

“Although the suspension of the official American presence represents neither a break in diplomatic relations nor a change in U.S. policy, it is a positive step in the right direction,” said SSIM spokesman David de Chand.

He claimed that Khartoum “is linked to international terrorism supported by Iran, Iraq and the Islamic Front in Algeria”.

Chand, also a Phd holder from a U.S. university, charged that Khartoum “has trained the Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists, including those who made an attempt on the life of president Hosni Mubarak.

“Khartoum is not only trying to superimpose its Islamic fundamentalist ideology on the non-Muslim population in Southern Sudan by means of coercion, but it is working with all the international terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists to destablise the democratically elected governments in neighbouring Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.”

The U.S. State Department placed Sudan on its ‘watch list’ of terrorist states two years ago.