Typing error causes nuclear scare in Sudan

KHARTOUM, March 10 (Reuters) – A stenographer for the U.S. Congress generated alarming headlines in the Sudanese press this week by giving the mistaken impression the United States conducted nuclear tests in the African country in 1962 and 1970.

The Sudanese government asked the United States for an explanation and began its own investigations into a Web site report that a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee had talked about the tests in Sudan.

But Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, who had summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires on hearing the news, said on Thursday it turned out that the word Sudan was merely a typing error for Sedan, the name of a nuclear test site in Nevada.

“The American administration … said that there is a typing mistake,” he told reporters. “Instead of writing Sedan, the typist in the military subcommittee branch typed Sudan,” he said.

“Now they want to correct the spelling mistake and they want to confirm the tests did not take place in Sudan but in Sedan, part of the United States in Nevada,” he added.

A U.S. embassy official in Khartoum said a statement had been issued affirming no tests were made in Sudan, but did not say how the mistake had happened.

The official transcript of the hearing, in the strategic forces subcommittee on March 2, has already been corrected, with a note saying the word Sedan was misspelt in the original.

Ismail said he was very relieved the reports were not true.

“Our first concern of course was for the people of Sudan.”