US rejected Sudanese offer to share intelligence By Mark Huband in London
The US rejected an offer by Sudan to hand over two men suspected of links to the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa and refused offers to share intelligence on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, letters between the two governments reveal.
Suspicion of Sudan's government within the Clinton administration lay behind the decision to reject the offer to share intelligence, two months before bombs killed 224 people. The stand-off came to light in the FT's investigation into al-Qaeda's global terrorist network, the final part of which is published on Friday.
The revelation came as opposition forces in Afghanistan were reported on Thursday night to be advancing on Kandahar, the last stronghold of the Taliban regime which harboured al-Qaeda.
Relations between the US and Sudan have thawed since President Bush's election. Even before the September 11 attacks, Sudan had started to provide the US with details of individuals suspected of terrorist links who had lived in Sudan when it provided a haven for radical groups between 1991 and 1996.
The rejection of similar co-operation by the Clinton administration denied US intelligence agencies access to details about al-Qaeda gathered while the organisation had its headquarters and training camps in Sudan in 1991-96.
On 5 February, 1998, Gutbi al-Mahdi, then head of Sudan's external security bureau, wrote to the regional head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, expressing a "desire to start contacts and co-operation between our service and the FBI."
Mr al-Mahdi, now political adviser to Sudan's president, Omar Hassan el-Bashir, also invited the official, David Williams, to visit Sudan.
Mr Williams declined the offer.
Sudan's initiative was intended to end its global isolation, which put its Islamist government on a US list of states alleged to sponsor terrorism.
The al-Qaeda leader was asked to leave Sudan in 1996, in part due to pressure on Sudan from the US and Saudi Arabia, both of whom were becoming concerned about his activities.
Mr el-Bashir wrote to President Clinton on February 16, 1997, inviting him to "send a mission tasked to investigate allegations that the Government of Sudan trains or shelters terrorists".
After the 1998 bombings, Sudan used a go-between in Cairo to alert US officials to the arrest by Sudanese security of two Pakistani men in Khartoum, Yahia Babicar, Sudan's deputy head of external security, told the FT.