Word: nimeiri
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President Gaafar Nimeiri was approaching Cairo International Airport, stopping over to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after a ten-day visit to the U.S., when he heard the news: the Sudanese armed forces, led by his closest associate, Commander in Chief General Abdul Rahman Suwar Al Dahab, had overthrown him. The coup climaxed a period of turmoil that had gripped Nimeiri's country for more than two weeks and escalated during his absence. A stocky, gray-haired soldier, Suwar Al Dahab, 51, announced that the army wanted to bring under control "the worsening situation in the country." The military...
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...
...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 not radically shift away from Nimeiri's pro-Western outlook...
...Police and troops used riot sticks, tear gas and, on occasion, gunfire to quell the disturbances. At least six people were killed, more than 2,000 arrested; several thousand people, mainly squatters and vagrants, were trucked out of the city. The violence erupted the day before Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiri departed on a one-week visit to the U.S. that includes an April 1 meeting with President Reagan...
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...