Sudan reiterate call for UN inquiry on 1998 US missile attack
Aug 22, 2005 (Khartoum) — The government of Sudan reiterated a call for a United Nations probe into 1998 US cruise missile strikes that destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, in a statement issued Sunday.
“This painful memory should be a lesson to the international community for understanding the risks of using force, state terrorism, non-respect for international laws and institutions, the need for dealing with UN member states’s rights and duties on an equal standing and backing a member state subjected to aggression,” it said.
It called on the UN Security Council to “investigate the allegations made by the United States for attacking the Al-Shifa factory seven years ago.”
On August 20, 1998, the United States destroyed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on suspicion that it was involved in producing chemical weapons and had links with Al-Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden, who had lived in Sudan until two years earlier.
The strikes — which coincided with other raids in Afghanistan — were justified by the US administration as a retaliation for deadly Al-Qaeda bombings two weeks earlier against its embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salam.
Diplomats and rights watchdogs have questioned the legitimacy of the strikes on the Shifa factory, which also happened to be one of Sudan’s main sources of anti-malaria drugs.
The anniversary of the strike came a day after the visit to Sudan of a US Congress delegation, which travelled to the war-torn and famine-ridden western region of Darfur.
The Congress has described as genocide Khartoum’s repression of a rebellion that erupted there in February 2003 and aggravated a dire humanitarian crisis, leaving up to 300,000 people dead and more than two million displaced.
AFP/ST.