 The United States helped train and arm rebels from west Sudan who rose up against the Sudanese government last year, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir said in remarks published in an Egyptian newspaper yesterday. "Who else than the United States is behind this ... They took rebels to Eritrea, and set up training camps for them, spent money on them, armed them and gave them Thuraya mobiles to speak between anywhere in the world," Bashir told the Al-Ahram daily when asked about foreign involvement in Darfur. A US State Department official in Washington, who asked not to be named, dismissed the charge. "The whole purpose of the US policy is to end the violence in Sudan. We are not funding, training, providing armaments to, supporting in any way, shape or form the rebels anymore than we are supporting the Janjaweed (militia)," the official said. The Sudanese government has in the past accused Eritrea of arming Darfur rebels who launched their revolt against Khartoum in February 2003 after years of low-level clashes between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers over scarce resources. |