Sudan will not allow a US company to work in Darfur: Official

June 6, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government announced today that it will not allow the extension of contract to a US company working in Darfur.

“We are not going to allow American companies in this country with the Mission in Darfur,” Sudan’s U.N. ambassador Abdel-Mahmood Mohamad told Reuters today.

Mohamad was referring to a no-bid engineering $250 million contract that was awarded to Lockheed Martin’s PA&E subsidiary.

“There are sanctions … so they can not benefit. Why are they sanctioning us?” he said.

US sanctions dating back to the Clinton administration bars any financial dealings with Sudan or institutions owned by Khartoum as such.

Last May Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.

Ban Ki-Moon defended the contract at the time saying that under the time constraint to build bases for peacekeepers in Darfur.

“You don’t have many vendors who are readily available to provide such service at a limited time. And that is why, in accordance with the necessary rules and regulations bestowed upon me as the Secretary-General, I have taken an exceptional decision. I am allowed to do that” he said last January.

The Inner City Press website quoted the head of the UNAMID in Sudan that the US special envoy Richard Williamson raised the issue of Lockheed Martin contract with Sudanese officials during his visit to Khartoum this week.

Williamson announced that normalization talks with Sudan were suspended after failing in his bid to bridge differences between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) over the oil rich region of Abyei.

(ST)