The Democratic Republic of the Sudan, Africa's largest country, is withdrawing its ambassador from Washington because of the US bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, on August 20th. Three days after the attack, the United States apparently realised that the factory in fact manufactured medicines, not nerve gas, as the US claimed.
The Clinton administration charged several times over the following days that the El-Shifta pharmaceutical industry's plant in Khartoum made "chemical weapons for terrorists". The Sudanese ambassador to the US, Mr Madhi Ibrahim Mohammed, said in his speech at the National Press Club here on Wednesday that the plant "was engaged in manufacturing human and veterinary medicines" and that it supplied medicine to Iraq under the United Nations "food for oil" programme, which was legal.
The CIA said the plant manufactured nerve gas. On Thursday, the New York Times wrote that in a meeting with senators "the CIA again asserted that its reported discovery of Empta near the factory was proof that the plant could be used by terrorists." Empta is an ingredient for VX, a nerve agent.
The CIA asserts that Mr Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian millionaire and fanatical Muslim expelled from his own country and now living in Afghanistan, financed the plant. A CIA agent reportedly "stole a soil sample from inside the plant's gates, a few yards from the gate", officials said.
Mr bin Laden is also suspected of ordering the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. "We decided that if he had a connection, as we believe he did, it would be wise to take it down," President Clinton's Republican Secretary of Defence, Mr William Cohen, commented. He now claims that Mr bin Laden's financial connections with the Khartoum plant are "indirect".
The Sudanese ambassador said in his speech that his government had offered several times to join the fight against terrorism. The White House, the State Department and the FBI did not respond, perhaps because they did not believe the statement.
A State Department official told him the Cruise missile attack was "not against the Sudanese people, and not against the Sudanese government, but against the facilities where we had very credible evidence that this chemical was being produced."
What the US did, Mr Mohammed declared, was to organise "a strong strike team and send Tomahawk missiles roaring into our capital, killing and maiming innocent civilians and destroying private property". When the decision was made to destroy the plant, US officials said they did not know that medicines were manufactured there.
The US information was that Empta was made in the plant and this justified its destruction. The CIA also was quite sure of this. The CIA also concluded that since the plant had some connection with Mr bin Laden, who is hiding out in Afghanistan, Cruise missiles should be directed there since it had information about a high-ranking guerrilla meeting taking place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The missile strike on that area was probably meant to kill Mr bin Laden and his chief aide. If so, it apparently failed.
Mr Reuel Marc Gerecht, described as a former Middle Eastern-targets officer in the CIA's clandestine service, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on August 27th: "Killing Mr bin Laden was obviously a goal of the strike, even if the means was a Cruise missile rather than a sniperscope."
He adds: "President Bush's National Security Adviser, Gen Brent Scowcroft, recently admitted that his administration had hoped to encourage disgruntled Iraqi military officers to kill Saddam Hussein."
He claims the Clinton administration "authorised the CIA to support the `silver bullet' solution of coup-seeking military officers in the Iraqi National Accord, an anti-Saddam opposition group . . . still, the Clinton administration (like its predecessors) appears uncomfortable with such realpolitik."
Mr Gerecht concludes his article with the statement: "The only way to stop Mr bin Laden is to kill him." The Wall Street Journal editorial page article is titled: "The etiquette of killing bin Laden."