Word: khartoum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Suddenly, Sudan seemed renewed. The change began with drum rolls and music on state-run Radio Omdurman, after which General Abdul Rahman Suwar al Dahab, the Defense Minister, proclaimed to the country, "The government is finished. The people stand united." Within minutes, the capital city of Khartoum, which had been in a state of paralysis, sprang to life. Drivers honked their horns, radios blared, and hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets, cheering, chanting, dancing, embracing. Policemen smiled; children, shouting, rode on the tops and trunks of cars...
Only hours earlier, Khartoum (pop. 1.4 million) had been a ghost town. Doctors, lawyers, engineers were on strike. The airport and most stores were closed. President Gaafar Nimeiri, the wily strongman who had weathered a succession of coup attempts during an almost 16-year reign, was outside the country. Now, with Nimeiri stranded in Egypt on his way back from a visit to Washington, the people exulted at his overthrow by Suwar al Dahab and the Sudanese military. Some brandished the old yellow, green and blue-striped flag that had been replaced the year Nimeiri came to power; others ripped...
According to reports from Khartoum, the bloodless coup was greeted by tens of thousands of Sudanese celebrating in the streets. Two days earlier, the capital had resounded with the largest and most vocal antigovernment demonstrations since Nimeiri came to power in his own military coup almost 16 years ago. At least 20,000 demonstrators, among them doctors, lawyers, bank clerks, uni- versity staffers and engineers, marched through the dusty streets of Khartoum chanting in English, "Down, down with the U.S.A.," and in Arabic, "Down with one-man rule." Police used tear gas to drive the crowds away from the presidential...
...Santa Barbara, Calif., where President Reagan was spending the Easter holiday, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes predicted that the coup would not have a major effect on Washington's close relations with Khartoum. Said a State Department official: "The demonstrations provided the release for a kind of pent-up antagonism that took on a momentum of its own." Within hours, Libya, a foe of the Nimeiri regime, became the first country to recognize Sudan's new military leaders. Despite this recognition, Western diplomats in Cairo said they were hopeful that the leaders of the 60,000-man Sudanese army would...
Western diplomats in Khartoum discounted government claims that the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood was involved in the riots; Nimeiri, wary of its growing power, had recently cracked down on that group. Instead, said one Western official, "people appeared to be venting their frustrations at recent price rises in gasoline and bread." The increases followed Nimeiri's decision to end subsidies on some basic commodities, part of an economic austerity plan demanded by the International Monetary Fund. Nimeiri is expected to cite last week's unrest in asking Reagan to ease U.S. demands for economic reforms and to release $181 million...