The Sudanese cry foul in continuous demonstrations this week, denying that the destroyed pharmaceutical plant produced agents for the nerve gas VX

The UN Security Council on Monday deferred a decision on Sudan's request for a fact-finding mission to investigate the activities of the Al-Shifaa plant. US representatives at the UN said there is no need for an investigation, since the US already has evidence. "Putting together a technical team to confirm something we already know doesn't seem to have any point to us," said Peter Burleigh, the US deputy ambassador to the UN. "There's no doubt about the credibility of the evidence that the US government has."

Sudan recalled its diplomatic mission from Washington and said that US diplomats working out of neighbouring Kenya and Egypt since 1996 would not be allowed to return to Khartoum. By Monday, Khartoum had pulled its two top diplomats out of London and asked Britain to "voluntarily" reduce its diplomatic mission in Sudan in protest against Britain's declared support for the strikes.

"We regret this decision," said a British Embassy spokesman in Khartoum, "and we will be looking into arrangements in the coming days." Ambassadors from other European countries which supported the attack would be informed of Sudan's "strong protest" later in the week.

During the weekend, hundreds of protesters stoned the British Embassy in Khartoum, prompting a British complaint to the Sudanese government that it had failed to provide adequate protection for the mission. The deserted US Embassy met with the same fate when demonstrators took to the streets, pulling down the US flag after breaking the flagpole. Around 50 Al-Shifaa factory workers held a protest at the site on Tuesday, waving saws, wrenches and banners which read: "Clinton destroys, we build".

US administration and intelligence officials claimed that Iraqi scientists had helped produce elements of the nerve agent VX at Al-Shifaa, according to The New York Times. The officials justified the attack on the grounds of a soil sample secretly obtained months ago from outside the plant. The Al-Shifaa plant had a UN-approved $200,000 contract to deliver humanitarian supplies to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme. It also produces half of Sudan's medicines and vaccines, including antibiotics and drugs for malaria and tuberculosis.

Washington has refused to reveal its evidence in detail or how it was obtained. White House spokesman Mike McCurry said on Monday that "our confidence that that facility was manufacturing chemical weapons precursors is quite high." Khartoum dismissed the claims, saying the soil samples do not constitute "concrete evidence".

Three Jordanian civil engineers who worked for one year at the factory after its opening in 1996 told reporters in Amman that the complex was not equipped to produce ingredients for chemical weapons. And Tom Carnaffin, a British engineer who had also worked at the pharmaceutical plant, also questioned US claims that nerve gas agents were manufactured at the factory.

Bashir described President Bill Clinton as "a war criminal of the first degree", arguing that if the US truly believed that the Al-Shifaa plant manufactured chemical weapons, it committed "an ugly crime" by bombing it in the midst of a city, thus endangering thousands of lives.

Bashir condemned the US aggression, insisting that Clinton ordered it to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, adding that "a new US raid against Sudan would be a declaration of war" and that he would "reserve the right to respond, using legal means."

Paradoxically, Bashir said that he would consider improving relations with the US if it "publicly apologises" for the attack, adding that the US has asked, through an undisclosed third party, to undertake combined security operations with Sudan. "They said that they wanted cooperation between the Sudanese and the American security authorities," Bashir said on Monday.

"This happens for the first time although they have refused a similar request we made in the past," noted Bashir, who before the attack sent Clinton more than five written messages proposing cooperation in combatting terrorism. The Sudanese president added that Washington assured Khartoum, through the same third party, that the Sudanese regime was "not targeted by the attack, but terrorism."

Washington quickly disclaimed the overtures for security cooperation. The report "is absolutely not true", said State Department spokesman James Foley.

Hassan Turabi, Sudanese speaker of parliament and widely believed to be the power behind Bashir's government, said Bin Laden was not a terrorist. (The Saudi maverick lived in Sudan in the early 1990s, but was forced out under Western pressure in 1995.)

"[Bin Laden] would assist any persecuted minority or community," claimed Turabi, noting that Washington perceived the Saudi militant as a "hero" when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. "Once the Russians were gone, he himself retroactively became a terrorist," Turabi said, accusing the West of mounting a modern-day crusade against Islam. "It's just a criminal aggression against Islam, without any cause."

Bashir insisted that Bin Laden had "no financial interest" in the plant, claiming that the US received disinformation from the Sudanese opposition in Cairo about the plant, alleging it was producing the VX agent.

Leaders of the Cairo-based National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella organisation of Sudanese opposition parties, maintain that the attack took them by surprise, and that they were "neither party to it, nor consulted in advance." A NDA member told Al-Ahram Weekly that the opposition "never asked for military intervention, not even from Egypt, Sudan's closest neighbour."

Sudanese opposition figures in Cairo were divided in their reaction to the US strike; some condemned the aggression against their homeland regardless of the existing regime, while others saw the attack as a harbinger for the fall of the Bashir-Turabi National Islamic Front (NIF). Overall, the NDA was reserved in its reaction to the US strike, stating that it was an "inevitable result of the practices and policies of the ruling regime and its support of terrorism."

Sadek Al-Mahdi, former prime minister and president of the Umma Party, told the Weekly that the NDA supports the Egyptian proposal to convene an anti-terrorism international conference to agree on "the necessary measures for fighting terrorism."

He suggested the creation of a specialised UN counter-terrorism agency to develop the mechanisms for fighting terrorism at international levels. "Fighting terrorism is not the responsibility of individual nations, but rather a collective international one," the former premier said.