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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 19, 1985
Sudan was quite pro-West until a coup ousted President Jafar Nimeiri on
April 6. Radical Libya is now courting Sudan seductively, according to
this dispatch in the July 22 U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT:
Fear of new anti-American trouble-making in Africa is rising
sharply with word of the signing of a military pact between
Sudan--a longtime friend of the United States--and radical Libyan
strong man Muammar Qadhafi. Outlines of the agreement, announced
in Khartoum on July 8, cover only Libyan training and equipment
for Sudan's armed forces. But its mere existence rings alarm
bells in the U.S. and other Western nations because of Qadhafi's
support of revolutionary violence across Africa and the Mideast.
In Washington, Reagan administration officials [sent] •••an un
usually blunt warning to the new Sudanese government of Gen.
Abdul Rahman Sewar El Dahab•••• Sudan was one of the few Moslem
nations to back the 1978 Camp David Accords that resulted in a
peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. It cooperated with the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in a secret airlift of Ethiopian
Jews to Israel earlier this year. Partly in return for this sup
port, the U.S. has been sending Sudan more than 400 million dol
lars a year in economic aid. The only African country to receive
more is Egypt....
Sudan [is] the largest nation ir:i Africa and one of its most
strategically located. Sudan borders 2!! eight other countries,
including some that are considered ripe for subversion, and the
Red Sea•••• Sudan's warmer relations with Libya emerged against a
backdrop of the Dahab regime's efforts to come to grips with a
long list of woes besetting this nation of nearly 22 million
people. Two of the most serious problems are closely linked--a
bankrupt economy and a two-year civil war in the south that
further drains Sudan's slim resources•••.
On top of all the other burdens is the famine that afflicts the
entire region.
Relief officials list at least 4.5 million
Sudanese as famine victims. Nearly 1.4 million refugees, most of
them Ethiopians, have flocked into Sudan in hopes of finding
food. In Khartoum, there are few illusions that any of these
problems will be solved anytime soon.
Instead, there is new
concern that Sudan may become� cockpit of African turmoil.
A radicalized Sudan would, in turn, place enormous pressure on the key
country in the Arab world, Egypt. President Mubarak is under increasing
pressure from Muslim clerics to apply stricter Islamic codes.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau