News Article by AFP posted on November 25, 2000 at 03:46:32: EST (-5 GMT)
Sudan's Beshir denies bombing civilian targets
KHARTOUM, Nov 24 (AFP) - Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on
Friday
denied government forces attacked civilians in southern Sudan
this week,
saying the target in rebel-held Yei town was a rebel
military position.
Beshir told a press conference he saw film of the attack on a
site of the
Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) where "an
ammunition warehouse was
blown up and where there were many
militiamen in civilian clothes carrying
arms."
In Nairobi this week, rebels, aid workers and a visiting senior
US
official, Susan Rice, said that Sudanese government bombs killed
18 civilians
in Yei town on Monday.
But Beshir accused the foreign media "hostile to the government
and
supporting the rebel movement" of "circulating such reports."
He said the government is responsible for the safety of the
civilians and
"we fully respect this responsibility."
The Sudanese president said his government gives priority to
peace which
he said would be achieved only through negotiation
rather than by force which
he said "is costly."
He has claimed that the SPLA "is not inclined towards a
negotiated peace
and wants to reach its objectives by force," adding
that his government "has
stepped up the military operations to prove
to the rebels that problems
cannot be resolved by military force but
by dialogue."
Beshir, however, said he was dissatisfied with the slow pace of
talks
sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development
(IGAD) between
his government and the SPLA, blaming the United
States.