All opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Sudan Foundation. Dear Mr Cook, The American cruise missile strike on the al-Shifa factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on 20 August 1998, and the British government's unconditional and uncritical support for it is quite simply unsustainable. Unsurprisingly, the United Kingdom is alarmingly out of step with international opinion on this issue.
Many countries see the American strike on Sudan as an act of state terrorism.
In addition to Russia and China, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organisation of African Unity, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, organisations representing most of the world's nations, have all condemned the American missile strike on Sudan, and are calling for a United Nations response by way of a verification mission to visit the factory. A British government has not been as isolated as this since Margaret Thatcher's refusal to support sanctions against apartheid. As you will probably be only too aware, the United States government made five claims about the al-Shifa factory in justification of its missile attack on the plant. As you may now also be aware, the United States government has now publicly conceded that the first three of its claims were untrue. None of these assertions was accurate, and all were quietly retracted by Washington.