Sudan to pay compensation over USS Cole attack

Sudan has agreed to compensate the families of 17 US sailors who died when their ship, the USS Cole, was bombed by al-Qaeda at a port in Yemen in 2000.

This is a key condition set by the US for Sudan to be removed from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The US ruled Sudan was responsible for the attack as the two suicide bombers involved were trained in the country.

Removal from the US blacklist would allow sanctions to be lifted, a major objective of Sudan’s new government.

High inflation and shortages of fuel and foreign currency helped trigger the protests which led to the downfall last April of the long-serving President Omar al-Bashir.

It is not clear how much Khartoum has agreed to pay to the families, but the Reuters news agency quotes a source close to the deal as saying it is $30m (£23m).

Sudan’s new rulers are desperate to end the country’s economic isolation and gain access to the dollar-based international financial system to attract loans and investment.

The compensation is one of several steps taken recently to appease Sudan’s critics.

The transitional government has agreed that Mr Bashir should be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide and war crimes charges allegedly committed in the country’s Darfur region.

Earlier in the month, Sudan’s top general Abdel-Fattah Burhan met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda in an apparent effort to normalise relations after decades of enmity.

The country’s information minister told the Associated Press that figures for the USS Cole compensation could not be revealed as negotiations were ongoing to reach a similar settlement with families of those killed in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

More than 200 people were killed in those attacks.

—BBC