Washington prevented me from meeting US Bush – Sudan’s FM

Sept 15, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s Foreign Minister Lam Akol has accused Washington of preventing him from meeting U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit in the United States earlier this week, Sudan’s al-Khartoum daily reported on Friday.

The foreign minister told the newspaper that U.S. officials refused to arrange the meeting “without giving an explanation”, forcing him to bring home a message sent by Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir to Bush.

Lam Akol returned to Sudan Thursday from the United States where he had apparently failed to convince Washington on the problems of Darfur and normalization of relations between the two countries.

During the four-day visit, Lam Akol held two meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on bilateral relations and the latest developments in Darfur as well as the UN Security Council Resolution 1706 which calls for the sending of international peacekeepers to Darfur.

However, he refused Washington’s suggestion of delivering al- Bashir’s message to Rice, insisting that he had to hand it over by himself to the U.S. president according to the Sudanese president’s instruction.

Sudanese media reported that al-Bashir reiterated in the message his country’s refusal of deploying international peacekeeping force in Darfur, and its keenness to solve the problem through dialogue instead of confrontation.

The UN Security Council passed the resolution 1706 last month on the deployment of more than 20,000 international peacekeepers in Darfur. But the resolution has been refused by the Sudanese government.

(Xinhua/ST)