Sudan leads antiterrorist push

As the US intensifies its scrutiny of two African nations that it suspects of harboring terrorists, leaders from Sudan and Somalia - and five of their neighbors - gathered last week to discuss their region's growing reputation as a haven for militants, among other issues.

The ninth meeting of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was supposed to agree on a definition terrorism, as well as address issues such as Sudan's grinding civil war. But when the two-day meeting ended Friday, the leaders of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, and Sudan had made little progress beyond condemning terrorism.

In a region where most countries call their internal opposition "terrorists" and support militant groups in neighboring countries, the summit shows how hard it will be for leaders here to fall in line with the US-led war on terrorism.

Nonetheless, US and UN officials say that by hosting a serious debate on this issue, Sudan has signaled its own desire to end its isolation and work with the international alliance to weed out terror. One high ranking official who participated in the closed-door session said the speakers, including Sudanese President Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, showed a sincere, and new, interest in addressing the problem of regional terrorism together.

Cooperation between the US and the once-pariah Sudan has been increasing for months. CIA and FBI operatives have settled comfortably into Khartoum and are reportedly working with these Sudanese counterparts, and some 200 intelligence files detailing the activities of Osama bin Laden and his followers during their Khartoum years have been delivered to the State Department. In addition, some 30 people suspected of being bin Laden associates were reportedly arrested and expelled.

Mr. bin Laden arrived in 1991 and stayed for five years, adopting the local dress, setting up an office downtown, opening construction, farm, and trading companies, and investing some $20 million in this poor country. It is during these years that he allegedly began pulling together the network that would grow into Al Qaeda.

Once one of Washington's principal African allies, Sudan has been out of favor since the beginning of its civil war in 1983. By 1993, the State Department had listed Sudan as a haven for terrorists. Sudan's UN delegation was implicated in the trial of the first World Trade Center bombers, and a Sudanese cell was accused of the attempted murder of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Both UN and US sanctions were imposed, and the US Embassy in Khartoum closed in 1996. Relations between the two reached a low in 1998 when, following Al Qaeda's bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US fired missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, claiming - based on apparently faulty intelligence - that chemical weapons were being produced there.

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