OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Monday 11.30pm.
THE United Nations Security Council held preliminary discussions Monday on an Arab-sponsored draft resolution demanding a UN investigation into the bombing of the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the United States last month.
In particular the resolution demands an investigation into the US claim that the factory was manufacturing chemical weapons.
Security Council president Hans Dahlgren of Sweden said he had received a letter from Lebanese Ambassador Samir Moubarak, head of the informal cluster of Arab states known as the Arab Group, with a copy of the draft resolution in it.
“But the conclusion of today’s discussion was that consultations will continue among members,” Dahlgren said.
The US has said an investigation is unnecessary because US intelligence has proved that El Shifa produced chemical weapons. Officials have cited a soil sample taken from the grounds of the complex that they say contains Empta, a precursor chemical for the deadly nerve agent VX.
Washington says El Shifa was also linked to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, whom US officials suspect as having masterminded last month’s bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Meanwhile Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said on Monday that bin Laden had no special network in Sudan in the five years that he lived there.
“Bin Laden came to Sudan after the Afghan war and invested in the road network, airports and agriculture,” the president said in an interview with the Arab weekly Al-Wasat.
“Bin Laden has no partisans or network in Sudan, except for a small group of assistants who have always stayed far away from the media. But America has made him into an ogre it sees everywhere, even after he left Sudan,” Beshir said.
Jane’s Intelligence Review reported that bin Laden, who was stripped of his Saudi nationality in 1994, was funding Islamic groups across the world during his stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1996.
27