Deadly Coup Plot Is Alleged in Sudan

Sudanese authorities accused an opposition party Saturday of plotting to kill more than three dozen senior government officials and blow up key sites in the capital, where heavily armed troops were out in force for a second day.

The state news agency said the planned attacks were part of a coup plot for which members of the opposition Popular Congress party were arrested earlier this month. An opposition official denied that his group had tried to overthrow the government.

The state-run Sudan Media Center said two army officers and an unspecified number of privates were among those arrested before plotters could launch a series of abductions and attacks that were to have begun at 2 p.m. Friday. The center said the officers allegedly turned over arms to the plotters.

Reacting angrily to the alleged plot, President Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir spoke to crowds north of Khartoum and called on Sudanese to train and prepare to defend their government and country against “internal and external” enemies. Bashir also denounced detained Popular Congress leader Hassan Turabi, formerly a close associate.

Turabi was the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government set up after Bashir seized power in 1989. But the men fell out in 1999 when Bashir accused Turabi, then the speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power. Bashir stripped Turabi of his position. Turabi then formed his party and became the most prominent Islamist in opposition.

Ali Haj Mohammed, deputy secretary-general of the Popular Congress party, told the Al Jazeera satellite television channel from Germany that his group did not advocate violence and said the government’s accusation was a “fabrication.”

The alleged coup attempt comes as Sudan is under international pressure to end violence in the western Darfur region between non-Arab farmers and Arab militias that some say are backed by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. At least 30,000 people have died in the conflict, the U.N. estimates.

This month, the U.N. Security Council, pushed by the United States, warned that it would consider sanctions against Sudan’s oil industry if the government did not act quickly to stop the violence in Darfur.

Turabi has criticized the government for neglecting Darfur, and members of his group have blamed the government for what they term “foreign interference” in the situation. Turabi has been detained since early this year.

In the wake of the alleged coup attempt, Bashir lashed out at Turabi and the United States and issued a call to arms.

“Everything is in the hand of Allah, not America or its [U.N.] Security Council. And we in the Sudan fear no one but Allah,” he said. “We are telling every young man to move and train in the popular defense forces and national service camps, so that when America invades the Sudan, we will be ready.”

Although he did not mention Turabi by name, he accused the opposition leader of hypocrisy and said, “The real enemies of the Sudan are not the Westerners outside the country plotting against it, nor is it the Crusaders, or the Zionists, the real enemies are their agents who are living here among us.”