US military statements conflict with reports on bombed medical factory in Sudan

The owner of the Sudanese medicinal factory which was hit by US missiles in August, 1998 said that he has no relations with Osama Bin Laden, who is held responsible by the US for bomb attacks against two US embassies in eastern Africa last year.

Salah Idrees, owner of the al-Shifaa factory near Khartoum, told the US ABC network that his factory has no relation to chemical weapons nor to Osama Bin Laden.

An ABC News report on Wednesday said that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency held a very secret review and reached the conclusion that the decision to strike the Sudanese factory was built on bias and unreliable intelligence information.

The NY Times on Tuesday had reported that a team of chemists led by a Boston University Chemistry department Chairman "who examined soil, sludge and debris samples from a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed in August by American cruise missiles found no traces of chemical weapon compounds, according to a scientist hired by the owner of the plant."

The NY Times added that "The findings, though prepared privately for lawyers for the owner, who is now seeking redress from the United States, raise new questions about the government's reliance on tests of soil samples from the site obtained clandestinely by the CIA. American officials had said the samples contained traces of Empta, a precursor used in the production of deadly VX nerve gas."

But Pentagon Deputy Spokesman Captain Mike Doubleday denied that a review of the targets occured. He catagoricaly denied that Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which determines tagrgets, had done such a review. However, when Doubleday was repeatedly pressed as to whether such a review may have been done by an outside group of experts hired by the DIA or other US agencies, the Pentagon spokesman said "no analysis done by the DIA on this subject." As the whether the CIA may have done such analysis, the spokesman was unable to comment referring the reporters to ask the CIA.