Sudanese FM calls on US Powell to retract statement on genocide

Sept 11, 2005 (CAIRO) — Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail invited former US secretary of state Colin Powell to reconsider its statement on genocide in Darfur.

Colin Powell said in a television interview to broadcast Friday September 9 that his UN speech making the case for the US-led war on Iraq was “a blot” on his record.

Mustafa hoped that a day would come when former would announce that what had come in his statement before the Congress of existence of genocide in Darfur was unfounded.

Commenting on recent statement by Powell in which he said that his speech to the UN describing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction would be a blot on his record, Ismail said to the official SUNA that we call on Collin Powell to make another statement saying that his image was also distorted by the statement in which he said there had been a genocide in Darfur.

America’s former ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, admitted in an interview to the BBC1 broadcasted on July 3, 2005 that the Bush administration’s stance was dictated by domestic considerations.

The Bush administration described the Darfur atrocities as genocide in order to please the Christian right ahead of the American presidential elections, according to Danforth.

(ST)