Sudan urges all Africa to ban chemical weapons

KHARTOUM, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Sudan urged all African countries on Wednesday to sign a convention banning chemical weapons, a week after the fifth anniversary of a U.S. strike on what Washington called a chemical weapons facility in Sudan.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told delegates from 35 African countries at a conference in Khartoum to sign and ratify the international Chemical Weapons Convention banning the use and manufacture of chemical weapons.

“I call on the African countries that have not joined the convention to do so,” Ismail said at the opening of the three-day conference on banning the weapons.

In 1998, the United States fired missiles at what it said was a factory in Khartoum involved in making components for chemical weapons and partly financed by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant who Sudan hosted from 1991 to 1996.

The United States, which names Sudan on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, blames bin Laden’s al Qaeda network for attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people earlier in 1998.

Sudan, which ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1999, said the target was a privately owned pharmaceuticals factory and denied any links with al Qaeda.

Ismail said arms budgets in African states were rising, leading to military action at a time when they face poverty and underdevelopment.

“This will lead to extremism, conflicts, violence and terrorism,” he said, adding Sudan supported the prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons.

Sudan itself is due to restart peace talks with its main southern rebel group in Kenya on September 10, hoping to resolve a 20-year-old civil war that has killed about two million people in the largest country in Africa.

Rogelio Pfirter, director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told the conference he had enlisted Ismail’s help to convince all African countries to ratify the convention.

“Universality is crucial to the very essence of the convention,” he said.

As of June this year, African countries which had yet to sign the convention included Egypt, Libya, Angola and Somalia, the OPCW Web site (www.opcw.org) said.

African countries that had signed but not yet ratified the convention included Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the Web site said.