Ethicists Urge Probe of Attack in Sudan

A group of Baptist ethicists and church leaders has called for an investigation of the U.S. missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan to determine if the Sudanese facility was being used to make chemical weapons for terrorists.

The plant was destroyed Aug. 20 as part of the U.S. response to the terrorist attack on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. officials defended the attack on the basis of a soil sample secretly collected outside the facility that suggested the factory was used to manufacture the deadly nerve gas VX. But the Baptist group, in an open letter to President Clinton, said it appeared U.S. military officials may have erred in selecting the plant for destruction.

They noted that some officials have conceded that the facility produced human and veterinary medicines for the Sudanese people even as they insisted it was a legitimate target.

“We, Baptist ethicists and congregational leaders, urge you to encourage inspection by international scientists, preferably chosen by the United Nations, to verify whether the plant was in fact producing a chemical or chemicals that can be used only to produce poison VX gas,” the letter said.

The letter was initiated by Robert Parhan of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tenn. Among the signatories was Glen Stassen of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.