A spelling mistake in a United States Congress transcript and the name of a food scare gripping Britain are the latest quirky twists to have fuelled anti-Western paranoia in Sudan, currently under huge international pressure over the violence in Darfur.
A typo in the transcript of the US Congress’s armed services strategic services subcommittee’s March 2 session had the unforeseen consequence of triggering Sudanese accusations that the US had carried out nuclear tests in Sudan.
The report was supposed to refer to a codenamed US site called ”Sedan” but the transcript mistakenly called it ”Sudan” instead.
”The Sudan test displaced 12-million tons of earth and dug a crater 320 feet deep in over 1 000 feet in diameter,” reads the transcript, quoting representative Ellen Tauscher, speaking to the committee on March 2.
A week later, Sudanese officials started blaming the alleged nuclear testing and resulting waste for a reported rise of cancer cases north of Khartoum, prompting Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail to request a clarification from Washington.
Minister of Agriculture and ruling-party secretary general Majub al-Khalifa Ahmed accused the US of being ”the state of the devil” and said ”the US nuclear tests were at the origin of cancer cases that have appeared in Sudan”.
The Sudanese media pounced on the scandal and reported on Tuesday that the US charge d’affaires was summoned over the issue.
”It is clear from the context that she [Tauscher] was referring to a well-known July 6 1962 explosion at the Nevada test site, codenamed Sedan,” the Federation of American Scientists said in a statement.
”The term ‘Sedan’ was mistakenly transcribed as ‘Sudan’ both by Federal News Service and by FDCH Political Transcripts and has been so recorded in the Nexis news database, where it continues to cause mischief,” it explained.
”We have no reason that makes us doubt the explanation that we have received from the US administration,” Ismail told reporters on Thursday, adding, however, that the investigation the Sudanese authorities have begun will continue ”so as to be fully reassured”.
The misunderstanding, whether genuine or not, betrays a rising anti-US sentiment in Khartoum, on which the international community — led by Washington — has turned up the heat over its involvement in atrocities committed in Darfur.
The Sudanese authorities also took offence at the fact that a cancer-causing food dye — which created a stir in Britain and other countries after it was discovered in several food products — was named after their country.
The incriminated Sudan I red dye, a colouring usually included in solvents, waxes and polish, was found in close to 500 products last month, prompting a European-wide food scare and mass recall from the shelves.
The scare was widely reported in the Sudanese media, and the Sudanese embassy in London complained to the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) earlier this month, demanding it shed light on the origin of the incriminated agent’s name.
”Nobody knows where the name comes from. It’s lost in the mist of time,” FSA spokesperson Rosalind Snow said.
”I can understand that the Sudanese would find it offensive … we have chemists and academics trying to track down the name but Sudan I was first synthesised in the 19th century and it’s very difficult,” she explained.
Khartoum has been under close international scrutiny and faces United Nations sanctions over the repression of an uprising in Darfur that was brutally crushed by its proxy militias, which are now accused by the US Congress of genocide.
The authorities frequently resorted to anti-US rhetoric with the domestic public to fend off these accusations, accusing the West of plotting against Islam and seeking to plunder the country’s wealth. — Sapa-AFP