HORN OF AFRICA, IRIN Update
SUDAN: Khartoum set to ask UN to lift sanctions
The Sudanese government will urge the UN Security Council to lift
diplomatic and economic sanctions against it after more than four years,
despite the threat of the US blocking any such move with its veto in the
Council, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said in Khartoum on
Wednesday. He said the US had sent Sudan a message threatening to use its
veto on 15 November if Khartoum requested a lifting of the sanctions,
imposed in 1996 in the wake of Sudan's refusal to hand over suspects in an
assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia, and
its alleged assistance and support for terrorist elements. "We will
present our request on the scheduled date unless we feel that the outcome
will not be in Sudan's interest, and in this case we will postpone but not
altogether abandon the request," Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted Ismail
as saying. The foreign minister said dialogue with the US would not stop,
and relations would "never be as bad as they were before," it added.
The sanctions restricted the movement of Sudanese officials abroad, cut
the number of diplomatic missions in and to Sudan, and called on
international and regional organisations not to hold conferences in Sudan,
according to Resolution 1054 of the Security Council on 26 April 1996.
Even so, Sudan was planning to host a summit conference of the
Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (which has Djibouti, Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda as members) next week, AFP
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
