SUDAN: PRESIDENT EL-BASHIR LABELS BILL CLINTON A WAR CRIMINAL

(24 Aug 1998) Arabic/Nat Sudan’s president has labelled U-S President Bill Clinton a ’war criminal’ after last week’s air strikes and denied that his country had any links with Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, the man whose terrorist network the U-S was after. Omar Hassan el-Bashir spoke to APTV following his first news conference since last Thursday’s strike against what the U-S claims was a chemical weapons factory. He also said in addition to Washington, Sudan was pulling its diplomatic representatives out of Britain over its endorsement of the strikes. Meanwhile, a few thousand Sudanese women marched in the streets of Khartoum chanting anti-American messages and denouncing the attack. To Sudanese President Omar Hassan el-Bashir, last week’s U-S air strikes against his country were the acts of a ’war criminal’. That is what he is calling President Bill Clinton, who launched the attack to strike at the terrorist network of Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden. El-Bashir denied that the pharmaceuticals factory was producing chemical weapons, which the U-S claims. In an interview with APTV, he said the missile strikes really targeted innocent Sudanese living around the factory. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) “The fact is the American president has done something which violates international law. He intended to destroy civilian areas. He intended to kill innocent civilians. That (the strike) was based on his claims that there were chemical weapons. Therefore, it’s a first class criminal act towards innocent civilians who lived around the factory. Therefore, he’s a war criminal.“ SUPER CAPTION: Omar Hassan el-Bashir, President of Sudan At an earlier news conference, el-Bashir said the U-S was trying to reach out to Sudan by insisting that its air strikes were aimed at terrorism - not at the Sudanese government - and was seeking greater security cooperation with the country. Washington has yet to confirm such efforts publicly. And the Sudanese leader said he was pulling out diplomats not only from Washington, but Britain, which strongly supported the American attack. He said American diplomats, who have been working out of neighbouring Kenya and Egypt since 1996, would not be welcome in Khartoum in the future. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) “We requested that our staff in Washington return to Sudan. They have not arrived yet. The ambassador has returned already, because he was just on his way to Washington and turned back. It’s known that the American diplomats were already withdrawn before the attack and of course, we won’t allow them to come back and work in Khartoum. As for Britain, we scaled back our representation from ambassador to charge d’affaires. We’ve requested our ambassador come back and to inform the British government that we’ve decided to scale back our representation so they can do the same thing and withdraw their ambassador. As for the rest of the diplomats, we will call all the ambassadors of the countries that supported the attacks and we will inform them that Sudan is condemning the situation, which can simply be described as hostile.“ SUPER CAPTION: Omar Hassan el-Bashir, President of Sudan The U-S said it struck the Sudan factory because it believes it was part of the terrorism network of bin Laden, whose headquarters in Afghanistan was also targeted. But el-Bashir emphatically denied that Sudan has any links with bin Laden, who was driven out of the country where he had lived under Western pressure in 1995. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) SUPER CAPTION: Omar Hassan el-Bashir, President of Sudan Find out more about AP Archive: Twitter: Facebook: ​​ Instagram: You can license this story through AP Archive: