Sudan lodges UN protest of FM minister’s detention at US airport

Sept 30, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — Sudan has lodged formal complaint with the United Nations over the brief detention of its foreign minister at a US airport.

A Sudanese UN representative said his foreign minister, Lam Akol, was held for five hours at Dulles International Airport near Washington when he stopped over there on his way to New York to attend the UN General Assembly earlier this month.

“It was a true detention, in the real sense of the word, a violation of international law,” the Sudanese delegate added.

The Sudanese case coincides with the detention of Venezuelan foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, at John F. Kennedy International Airport last Saturday.

Maduro claimed that he was threatened and his travel documents taken away in what he alleged was a US reprisal for a speech by Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez at the UN General Assembly in which he called his US counterpart George W. Bush “the devil”, “a liar” and a “tyrant”.

The protest, filed at a meeting of the UN Committee on Relations with the Host Country, was brushed off by US deputy ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff.

He said the two cases (Maduro and Akol) were “linked” and “have to do with (Washington’s) bilateral relations” (with Caracas and Khartoum)”.

But Wolff played down the allegations.

On Akol’s case, the US delegate said: “We will be happy to look into this matter … We were informed that indeed there had been an issue regarding his visa.”

On Maduro, Wolff said that “the problem was sorted out in 27 minutes but the minister made it longer and instead of boarding his flight decided to come back to New York ‘maybe for political reasons.'”

(ST/AFP)