Sudan Leader Denounces America

Whipping up popular anger over a U.S. missile strike, President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir said Saturday that Sudanese are prepared to die in a holy war.

“America is attacking us because we are guardians of Islam,” Bashir told a crowd of at least 5,000 people who rallied in a square outside his offices in central Khartoum.

“We have tasted the sweet flavor of jihad [holy war] and martyrdom, and what we seek now is to die for the sake of God,” Bashir said.

“Go! Go! We are behind you” and “Death to America,” responded the throng, which included Cabinet ministers, members of parliament, trade unionists and students who were given the day off to attend the rally.

After Bashir’s speech, about 500 protesters went to the British Embassy, where they hurled stones at the building. One demonstrator climbed to the top of the embassy flagpole and cut down the Union Jack. After the flag dropped to the ground, angry demonstrators tore it to pieces.

The British government supported the U.S. attack on the Shifa Pharmaceutical factory in north Khartoum on Thursday. Washington says the plant produced the ingredients of chemical weapons, while Khartoum says it only manufactured medicine.

At least 10 people were wounded in the attack. There was a report Saturday that one of them had died.

President Clinton ordered the cruise missile strike in retaliation for the Aug. 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. U.S. missiles also struck the Afghanistan camps of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the man whom Washington accuses of instigating the bombings.

Sudan’s government, beleaguered by economic failure and 15 years of war against southern insurgents, has sought to use the strikes to rally support.

One banner at the rally hit on a theme sounded time and again by Sudanese: Clinton launched the attack to draw attention from his affair with White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Sudan has asked the U.N. Security Council to convene an urgent meeting to consider a U.N. investigation into the factory’s production and the attack. Sudanese diplomats are to address an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on Monday.