Khartoum has strongly denied reports that gold belonging to the al-Qaida organisation of Osama bin Laden has been moved through Sudan, a press report said on Wednesday.
”This report is absolutely baseless,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Chul Deng was quoted saying by the independent Al Ayam daily.
”There are no al-Qaida investments (in Sudan), and the
organisation does not and will never exist in Sudan,” Deng said.
”We are against terrorism and any terrorist-related act, which is against our faith and our ethics.”
Al-Qaida and leaders of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban have been moving gold from Pakistan to Sudan in recent weeks through the United Arab Emirates and Iran, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The Post, quoting European, Pakistani and US investigators, said that several boxes of gold were shipped in small vessels from Karachi to either Iran or Dubai, and then flown in chartered airplanes to Khartoum.
It said Sudan had probably been chosen because bin Laden, who lived there from 1991 to 1996, and members of his network retain business contacts in the northeast African nation.
Deng blamed the report on unnamed foreign powers which ”harbor interest in undermining the Khartoum-Washington ties and the improved Sudanese-European relations.”
”Declared and undeclared visits to Sudan” by numerous US officials testified to Khartoum’s cooperation with the United States in fighting terrorism, Deng said. – Sapa-AFP