International News Electronic Telegraph Monday 31 August 1998 Issue 1193 German envoy challenges Sudan arms plant claim By Andrew Gimson in Berlin Destroyed Sudanese factory produces only drugs: German Ambassador [30 Aug '98] - Sudan Net GERMANY'S ambassador to Sudan has challenged the claim by the Americans that the Khartoum factory they destroyed 11 days ago produced chemicals for use in toxic nerve gas. On the evening of the attack, Walter Daum informed his Bonn superiors that al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory made only medicines. According to Mr Daum, whose cables to Bonn are quoted in two German news magazines today: "Shifa produced predominantly medicines for human beings, such as, for example, antibiotics, drugs against malaria and diarrhoea, fluids for infusions and a few drugs for animals." The factory, he said, was neither protected nor kept secret. His report is likely to prove an embarrassment for the British and German governments, which have accepted Washington's assurance that the factory - hit by five United States cruise missiles - produced chemicals for use in making VX gas, which can kill within seconds of skin contact. The German Foreign Ministry said at the weekend that it did not share the ambassador's view of the factory, but it refused to comment in detail on Mr Daum's dispatches, describing them as internal correspondence. Sudan said that the factory supplied half the country's medicine requirements, and that its destruction has led to acute shortage. The Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said that Sudan would accept an official United Nations or US fact-finding mission "to check once and for all these or any other allegations on terrorism". But in Washington yesterday, Bill Richardson, the American ambassador to the UN, said he did not believe that the world body needed to get involved. America, he said, had "solid evidence" that the plant had military applications and that Sudan had ties with the rich Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of orchestrating the deadly bombings of two American embassies in east Africa on Aug 7. The American strikes against Sudan and against a suspected terrorist base in Afghanistan were in retaliation for that attack. Mr Richardson said that America had soil samples from the plant indicating the presence of EMPTA, a chemical only two manufacturing steps away from VX gas. 28 August 1998: Embassy staff are told by Cook to leave Khartoum 25 August 1998: Envoy is ordered out of Khartoum 23 August 1998: Embassy stoned in wake of missile strikes 22 August 1998: Outcry as Sudan factory is destroyed "Electronic Telegraph" and "The Daily Telegraph" are trademarks of Telegraph Group Limited. These marks may not be copied or used without permission. Information for webmasters linking to Electronic Telegraph. Email Electronic Telegraph.
