Sudan expresses doubts over Libyan threats made against its planes
January 6, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese army questioned on Tuesday the credibility of threats attributed to the Libyan army that it will shoot down any Sudanese aircraft entering its airspace.
“I doubt that this decision is a formal one that was issued from a body that has an official status in Libya. This decision lacks precision,” Sudan’s army spokesperson al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad said according to state media.
“If we accept the warning about military aviation, what about the civil aviation that is subject to standards and international agreements and protocols that govern its network with precision all over the world,” he added.
“No matter what, this warning for us in the armed forces does not mean anything because we do not infiltrate the Libyan airspace with our military jets, and any country in the world has the right to deal with any military flight penetrating the airspace without its permission, without threat or warning,” Col. Sa’ad added.
Yesterday, the internationally-recognized Libyan government announced a ban on the entry of citizens from Sudan, Syria and Palestine.
Libya’s interior minister Omar al-Sanki attributed the decision to Intel suggesting that citizens from these countries are flocking in to join “terrorist groups” fighting the Libyan army in Benghazi and other cities in the western part of the country.
Last September, Libyan government said Sudan was arming “terror” groups after an arms-laden Sudanese plane touched down in southern Libya, allegedly bound for a military airbase in Tripoli held by mostly Islamist militias who seized the capital in August.
But Sudan has vehemently denied accusations of backing any side in the Libyan conflict, saying the weapons were shipped for the use of a joint force between the two countries.
Tripoli has previously warned that it might sever ties with Khartoum and Doha over their alleged interference.
On Sunday, a minister in the Libyan government told London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that information obtained Libyan military intelligence indicated that Sudanese technicians had assisted pilots from the Libyan Dawn group in commandeering a plane that struck oil tanks in the Sidra port during the past week.
The attack launched on Libya’s largest oil terminal saw militants fire rockets from speedboats, setting alight huge oil tanks and causing Libya’s oil production to plunge by two-thirds, to 350,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to the state oil company.
In a related context Sudan strongly condemned terrorist operations in Libya that targeted oil installations, House of Representatives, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates and a number of Egyptian citizens there, and expressed deep concern over the continuing violence in the country.
Sudan’s permanent representative to the Arab League and its ambassador to Egypt Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel-Halim underscored in a statement before the meeting of permanent delegates at its extraordinary session on Libya the gravity of the situation there.
(ST)