Khartoum denies offering military support to US

The Sudanese government has denied reports that it has offered the United States the use of military facilities for the US-led anti-terror campaign, news agencies reported on Tuesday. "Such reports are totally unfounded... Such facilities have not been requested, and we have not granted them," AFP quoted Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il as saying. "There are no Sudanese-US military ties in the first place," he said. Isma'il also denied reports that Sudan, which is on the US State Department's list of seven terrorist-sponsoring countries, had provided US authorities with a list of persons suspected of involvement in terror attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September.

Recent attempts by Khartoum to improve relations with the US have included taking action against suspected terrorists operating in Sudan. Associated Press quoted Isma'il as saying on Tuesday that Sudan had been working with the US administration over the last year. "The investigation has covered everything - finances, information [and] movement [of] terrorists]," he said. "There is no deep political and military cooperation between Sudan and the United States, but we have delivered our position that we will cooperate with the international community to fight international terrorism," he added.

Following the bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, the US launched a retaliatory missile attack on a factory north of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, which, it said, was being used by Osama Bin Laden - widely regarded as prime suspect in the terror attacks on the US - to manufacture chemical weapons. Sudan claimed the site was privately owned by a pharmaceutical factory, and did not produce weapons.