Secret Service Probes Threats to Kill Numeiri

The Secret Service said today that it is investigating death threats made against Sudan President Jaafar Numeiri, who is in Washington seeking more financial aid for his troubled North African nation.

Despite the threats, a State Department spokesman said Numeiri met today with Secretary of State George P. Shultz for 45 minutes at the home of the Sudanese ambassador. The spokesman gave no details of their talks.

“There have been some threats made against the Sudanese party,” Secret Service spokesman William Corbett said. “We’re investigating at this time.”

Corbett said the threats were made in telephone calls to the Sudanese Embassy, but he declined to comment on the possible identity of the callers.

Corbett also declined to say whether Numeiri will cut short his vist to the United States.

Numeiri said in an interview published in El Sharq el Awsat, a daily newspaper based in London, that he would return to Sudan on Saturday.

A Sudanese Embassy spokesman in Washington, however, denied the report and said Numeiri will go to Egypt and Pakistan next week as scheduled, returning to Khartoum in mid-April.

Sudan’s major airport remained closed and telephone and telex links were cut off from the rest of the world today because of a general strike protesting recent stiff hikes in food and gas prices, which rose after Numeiri ordered subsidies eliminated.

On Wednesday, 20,000 demonstrators--students, bankers, doctors, lawyers and engineers--marched on the presidential palace in Khartoum with a petition calling for Numeiri’s resignation.

A Sudanese Embassy spokesman in Nairobi, Kenya, said that tear gas was used to disperse the demonstrators and that there were many arrests but that no one was injured during the protests.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank encouraged the elimination of food and fuel subsidies, which in turn, prompted President Reagan’s decision to release frozen U.S. aid to Sudan, Africa’s largest country.

Numeiri has been in power since 1969 when he led a coup d’etat. His power has been seriously threatened from within by Muslim fundamentalists and Christians opposed to the imposition of strict Muslim law in the country.