President El-Bashir urges Sudanese to defend government
By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Writer
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sep 26, 2004 (AP) — President Omar el-Bashir called on Sudanese on Saturday to train and prepare to defend their government and country against internal and external enemies, reacting angrily to what authorities said was a foiled coup plot a day earlier.
El-Bashir spoke to crowds north of Khartoum as authorities in the capital, where troops were out in force, disclosed more details about the failed coup in which the plotters were said to have planned to abduct and kill more than three dozen senior government officials and blow up key sites in the capital.
The Sudan Media Center quoted Sudanese security authorities as saying the opposition Popular Congress Party, accused of at least two separate coup plots this year, was behind the insurrection. An opposition official rejected the claim.
El-Bashir denounced his former close associate, the detained Congress Party leader Hassan Turabi.
Turabi was the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government set up after el-Bashir seized power in 1989. But the two men fell out in 1999 when el-Bashir accused Turabi, then the speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power. El-Bashir stripped Turabi of his position.
Turabi then formed his party and became the most prominent Islamist in opposition.
And, apparently seeking to rally support behind himself, el-Bashir used the event to criticize the United States for leading international efforts to punish Sudan for the violence in the Darfur region in the west of the country.
“Everything is in the hand of Allah, not America or its (U.N.) Security Council. And we in the Sudan fear no one but Allah,” the president said.
“We are telling every young man to move and train in the popular defense forces and national service camps, so that when America invades the Sudan, we will be ready,” the president said.
Last weekend, the United successfully pushed in the U.N. Security Council for a resolution that threatened sanctions against Sudan’s oil industry if the government did not act quickly to stop the violence in Darfur region.
News of the latest alleged coup plot came as international pressure has been growing on Sudan to end violence in Darfur between non-Arab villagers and Arab militias allegedly backed by the Khartoum government. An estimated 50,000 people have died as a result of the 19-month conflict.
“As to the hirelings, the plotters, and the tails of the Americans who are with us here, we will discipline them, for the sake of Allah,” el-Bashir warned, as shouts of “destruction to the traitors” rang out from the crowd.
He accused Turabi of “hypocrisy,” adding without naming the leader “that the real enemies of the Sudan are not the Westerners outside the country plotting against it, nor is it the Crusaders, or the Zionists, the real enemies are their agents who are living here among us.”
Turabi previously has criticized the government for neglecting Darfur, and members of his group have blamed the government for what they term “foreign interference” in the situation. Turabi has been detained since early this year.
Ali al-Haj Mohammed, deputy secretary general of the Popular Congress Party, told Al-Jazeera Arab satellite television from Bonn, Germany, that his group does not advocate violence and said and said the government’s accusation were a “security fabrication.”
“But we truly wish to see this government removed by way of a popular uprising. For everyday this government stays in office, it is a catastrophe for Sudan in general, a catastrophe for Sharia (Islamic law) and a catastrophe for Islam,” he said.
In Khartoum, heavily armed soldiers and military police were posted at intersections throughout the capital Saturday and around military and government installations. Pedestrians crossing bridges were questioned and subject to body searches. In parts of the capital, soldiers crouched in newly dug trenches, weapons in hand.
“They were planning to control the state-run radio, the TV and the headquarters of the Council of Ministers, and then arrest all the ministers and work to overthrow the government,” Information Minister Zahawe Ibrahim Malik said.
The center said two army officers and an unspecified number of privates also were arrested for cooperating with plotters of the coup attempt revealed earlier this month and that was to have unfolded Friday.
Security forces have arrested most of the main leaders and the grass-root participants involved in the plot, the center said. It said the search was continuing for the leader of the operation, Al-Hajj Adam Yusuf, a former agriculture minister.
The soldiers involved would stand trial, Malik said in a statement after an emergency Cabinet meeting Saturday.
Malik said he could not give a figure for arrests thus far because they were continuing and included what he called “precautionary arrests.”
He accused Eritrea of playing a role in supplying the arms the government has seized during the past 10 days.
On Sept. 8, police arrested more than 30 Popular Congress Party members in relation to the latest coup plot. A prominent party member said Sept. 19 that he was quitting the party because it was clear it was behind the attempt to overthrow the government.