|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
KHARTOUM, April 28 (AFP) - Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said that Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden liquidated his investments in Sudan before he left the country about four years ago. "Bin Laden has no investment in Sudan" as he "terminated all his businesses before his departure from Sudan," Ismail was quoted in Friday's Akhbar Al-Yom newspaper as saying. The Sudanese foreign minister denied a report that his government received a U.S. request to freeze Bin Laden's business activities in Sudan. Ismail, however, said there have been "positive signs" concerning U.S.-Sudanese relations and predicted that the recent arrival of a U.S. diplomatic mission in Khartoum would "eventually lead to full normalization of bilateral relations." Each side has put forward its conditions for normalizing ties through backdoor channels, he said. "Our conditions included the lifting of the American sanctions on Sudan" and stopping direct support for Sudanese rebels and acts that destabilize the country. Sudan also asked that the United States refrain from pressuring it through international organizations and stop accusing it of terrorism, he said. "The conditions set by the U.S. were observance of human rights and achievement of peace in Sudan," which has been rent by civil war since 1983. Ismail said those issues were "at the top of our priorities." The U.S. consul from Cairo arrived here last Sunday and a U.S. charge d'affaires arrived the previous week. The U.S. government moved its Khartoum embassy staff to Nairobi about four years ago for security reasons. The ambassador stopped visiting Sudan altogether after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown into little pieces in August 1998 by people linked to bin Laden. Then Washington mounted a cruise missile strike on a Sudanese factory alleged to be linked to bin Laden. After realizing that the factory had nothing to do with bin Laden, the United States did not apologize or compensate Sudan. Bin Laden has had his Saudi citizenship revoked for funding violent attacks against U.S. interests worldwide and is wanted by the United States.
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
