Vice-president welcomes "softened tone" from US

Sudanese Vice-President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha has said that Sudan is not at risk from attack by the United States, news agencies reported on Tuesday. Reuters quoted Taha as saying that the Sudanese government "welcomes a new softened tone" in the US administration's threats against terrorism, and reiterated Sudan's willingness to cooperate "to maintain international security and peace" after last week's terror attacks in Washington and New York. Osama bin Laden - held responsible in the US for last week's terrorist strikes, and formerly based in Sudan - was now thought to be in Afghanistan, and the Sudanese authorities had said he had taken all his supporters with him, the BBC reported. "We have nothing to fear, and there is no organisation in Sudan, whether official or otherwise, that is connected with what happened in the US," Taha was quoted as saying on Monday. Following the bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998, the US government retaliated by launching cruise missiles against a suspected chemical weapons factory north of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Sudan claimed the site was privately owned by a pharmaceutical company, and did not produce weapons. Meanwhile, the Sudanese government on Monday boosted security measures to prove that it was preventing suspected terrorists from entering the country, Reuters reported. "We are keen that Sudan does not become a crossing point, a place of escape or stay," Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il was quoted as saying. Sudan had also increased security at the US embassy and other US facilities, Reuters said.