Sudan accused Washington of seeking to overthrow the regime of President Omar al-Bashir by using rights groups and foreign powers, a top presidential adviser was quoted as saying on Thursday.
“The new American strategy for dismantling the Sudanese government from within is based on inciting international pressure on Khartoum through human rights institutions and by bringing into the country elements opposed to the government,” Mustafa Osman Ismail said.
In comments carried by the official SUNA news agency, Ismail added that relations with Europe have also been fraught because states there are “influenced by the American strategy through its client in Europe — Britain”.
His comments came in the wake of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa on Monday when Sudan was once again passed over for the rotating leadership of the union because of the ongoing conflict in the war-torn region of Darfur.
The US and several international human rights groups have been very vocal over the conflict, calling for the need for a more robust peacekeeping force there.
Bashir has repeatedly rejected such a deployment, accusing Washington of seeking to invade his country and plunder its resources.
Washington — which accuses the Khartoum regime of genocide in the four-year-old Darfur conflict — has slapped sanctions on Sudan since 1997.
Relations further soured in 1998, when the US bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on suspicion that it was involved in producing chemical weapons and had links with al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Sudan has repeatedly demanded compensation over the strike, which destroyed what also happened to be one of the country’s main sources of anti-malaria drugs and which experts have said led to thousands of civilian deaths.
Since it erupted in February 2003, many foreign players have been drawn into the Darfur conflict, which according to the United Nations has left at least 200 000 people dead and more than two million displaced.
The world’s largest aid operation is run out of Sudan, involving UN agencies and hundreds of NGOs. Many US and British rights groups — including Christian organisations — have aggressively campaigned for sanctions against Khartoum.
The fighting in Darfur has also spilled over into neighbouring Chad, where fresh clashes erupted on Thursday between rebel and government forces, and into the Central African Republic.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Nairobi on Wednesday that while the Sudanese government had agreed to a three-phase UN plan to settle the Darfur conflict, patience was necessary.
The UN is hoping to supplement the weak AU force currently deployed in Darfur with troops of its own, but Khartoum has yet to approve the latest plan.
Hopes of a breakthrough in efforts to curb the violence in Darfur now rest with China, whose President Hu Jintao is expected in Khartoum on Friday and who has promised to raise the issue in his talks with Bashir.
China absorbs about 60% of Sudan’s oil output, and is by far the largest foreign investor in the country. — AFP