SUDAN SETS ARMS PACT WITH LIBYA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580008-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: July 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580008-1
ARTICLE P=m
0S PAGE Z I
Sudan Sets
Arms Pact
With Libya
Logistical Support,
Training Included;
Cairo Ties Strained
By Christopher Dickey
W.ahmgton i'i,1 Foreign Servo e
CAIRO, July 8-Sudan. in a
move that could further damage its
once close alliance with Egypt and
its strategic links to the United
States, has announced a military
pact for logistical support and train-
ing with the revolutionary govern-
nuerit of Libya.
The prove was announced in
Khartoum today after Sudanese De-
fense Minister Maj. Gen. Osman
Abdullah ;Mohammed spent more
than a week in Tripoli meeting with
Muammar Qaddati and top Libyan
military officials.
The protocol signed there, ac-
cording to the state-owned Suda-
nese newspaper Al Sahafa and Su-
danese diplomats interviewed here,
provides for Libyan help with logis-
tics, transport, equipment, training
programs and "aspects of navy and
air detense."
Further details on its scope were
not available.
Since a coup April 6 ended the
16-year rule of Sudanese president
Jaafar Nimeri, there has been con-
cern in Cairo and Washington thati
the new government could come
under Qaddafi's influence.
Egyptians also fear the possibility
of virtual encirclement by hostile
neighbors, with Libya to the west,
Sudan to the south and Israel, with
whom relations have been cool, to
the east.
Sudan is the largest country in
Atrica and of major strategic impor-
hince. It horders eight other na-
t ion.;, ;i, xctl as (he Red Sea. It also
effectively controls the upper
ASHINGTO:T POST
9 July 1985
roaches of the Nile, which is central
to Egypt's survival.
Traditionally, 'Egypt has had
strong, often decisive impact on
events in Sudan. Under Nimeri,
Sudan broke relations with Libya
and signed integration and mutual
defense pacts with Egypt. Nimeri-
who has taken refuge in Egypt and
whose extradition Sudan is demand-
ing-was also the rare Arab leader
to have supported Egypt's signing
of the Camp David accords with'
Israel.
Pushed by popular discontent
with the alleged abuses of the Ni-
meri government and the pressures
of a growing rebellion in the non-
Moslem south led by John Garang, a
former Sudanese Army colonel, top
military commanders seized power
promising to open the country up to
democracy.
Gen. Abdel Rahman Sawar-
Dhabab, the leader of the coup, has
said he would maintain close ties
with Egypt but would normalize
relations with all of Sudan's neigh-
bors, including Libya and the Marx-
ist government in Ethiopia.
By doing so, Sudanese officials
have said they hoped to end the cru-
cial support those two countries
gave to Garang's growing insurrec-
tion.
Defense Minister Mohammed, a
key member of Sudan's policy-mak-
ing Transitional Military Council,
told the Sudanese press that Libya
would be trying to arrange peace
talks with the southern Sudanese
rebels.
Mohammed said Libya has "no
intention of forming any strategic
alliance with Sudan or of interfering
in Sudan's domestic and foreign
policies."
Mohammed was quoted by the
Libyan news agency as thanking
"the Libyan brothers" for wanting
to "raise the level of the Sudanese
armed forces which were weakened
under the regime of Nimeri."
The announcement of the new
military protocol comes as relations
between Cairo and the new Suda-
nese government already are
strained by protests in Khartoum
demanding that Nimeri, now in ex-
ile here, be extradited for trial on
charges of treason.
As many as 40,000 Sudanese re-
portedly protested in front of the
Egyptian Embassy in Khartoum
Thursday demanding that Nimeri
were organized by some of the
same student committees instru-
mental in setting the stage for the
April coup and the provisional gov-
ernment now in place.
The Nimeri case is complicated
further because the main charges
against him in Sudan stem from his
cooperation wit t e Central
Intelligence Agency and Israel in
the secret evacuation of Ethiopian
Jews to-Israel.
The trial of Nimeri in absentia
and his former first vice president,
Omar Tayyeb, now in a Khartoum
prison, is expected to begin in the
next several days, according to Su-
danese diplomats here.
U.S. officials have taken exhaus-
tive security precautions in Khar-
toum because of concern that Lib-
yan agents being infiltrated into
Sudan may strike at American rep-
resentatives there.
The United States supplied most
of the economic support of the Ni-
meri government and continues to
underwrite the current rulers, par-
ticularly with food support. The
nation is virtually bankrupt and
wracked by famine that could cost
hundreds of thousands of lives.
Egypt and Sudan, one Foreign
Ministry official here said recently,
"have to be friends, it's their geo-
graphical fate."
But Egypt and Libya are bitter
enemies. There are announcements
here almost monthly that Libyan-
backed terrorists have been appre-
hended and plots thwarted.
Today Egyptian and Sudanese
officials here maintained silence
about the implications of the pact.
But Egypt's concern about devel-
opments in Sudan has been increas-
ingly evident in the past few weeks.
On June 17, President Hosni Mu-
barak paid a surprise visit to Khar-
toum and met with Sawar-Dhabab
for P/2 hours of what were de.
scribed as "frank" discussions.
On June 25, Egypt said it would
be willing to review the economic
and military agreements it had
signed with Nimeri if the Sudanese
people wanted to do so.
Egyptian officials have said pri-
vately that they believe the protests
at their embassy in Khartoum were
the work of pro-Libyan elements
trying to provoke a break between
Egypt and Sudan.
Senior Sudanese diplomats here,
however, insist that the fears of
growing Libyan influence in Khar-
toum are ill-founded.
"We have been very clear," one
Sudanese official said. "We are nor-
malizing relations with all our
neighboring countries."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580008-1