The U.S. Thinks So, and Has Outlawed The

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

The connections are tantalizing. Libya shuts down some of its terrorist camps, and elements of the radical Palestinian Abu Nidal organization surface in Sudan. Lebanon's Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas set up offices in Khartoum. Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani visits Khartoum, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel soon arrive to train the fundamentalist people's militias set up by Sudan's Islamic regime. Rumors abound of Syrians, Palestinians and Iranians infiltrating schools in northern Sudan to recruit students for terrorist training camps in eastern Sudan. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the Egypt-based Islamic Group, some of whose members are charged with bombing the World Trade Center, obtained his U.S. visa in Khartoum.

For the past four years, Western intelligence agencies have suspected Sudan of playing a major role in promoting Islamic terror around the world. But there still hasn't been any real proof offered: no reputable eyewitnesses, no photographs, no documents. Nevertheless, the U.S. last week put its official stamp on the proposition, adding the country to its short list of pariah states sponsoring terrorism. The State Department declared that "evidence currently available" showed that Sudan allows its territory to be used as a sanctuary and training ground for all manner of Muslim fundamentalist and radical organizations. The announcement followed news reports that linked two Sudanese diplomats in New York City to the aborted plot to bomb the U.N., although that connection was not cited as a reason for putting Sudan on the terrorist list. Said State Department spokesman Mike McCurry: "There is a repeated pattern of behavior here . . . that we have raised directly with Sudan over . . . many months, and to this day they have been unwilling to address the problem in a way that we consider satisfactory."

The addition of Sudan to a list that includes Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba was ostensibly the culmination of a review that began under the Bush Administration. But U.S. officials may have also timed the announcement to send a signal of support to Egypt, whose secular government is under assault by fundamentalists. For months President Hosni Mubarak has been publicly accusing neighboring Sudan of backing his enemies. "The Sudanese deny it," says Mubarak, "but the camps are there. They are farms. They take people not only from Egypt but also from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and even from Uganda. They act as if they are workers on these farms. But under this umbrella they teach them about explosives and about firearms."

Sudan claims that these "farms" are simply camps for its Popular Defense Forces, Islamic militias that fight along with the Sudanese armed forces. But the presence of Iranians associated with Tehran's fearsome Revolutionary Guard has convinced Western intelligence agents that far more insidious activities are going on. This is the first time that Persian Shi'ite Iran has allied itself with an Arab Sunni Muslim government, but both regimes share a passionate disdain for neighboring secular states. Now that Libya and Syria are attempting to curry favor in the West by cutting their support for terrorist groups, says Philip Robins, Middle East expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, "Sudan is the best ally Iran has got."

Officials are uncertain whether Sudan is mainly playing host to foreign terrorists or actively exporting its own operatives and agitators. In the U.S. prosecutors are investigating the role Sudanese diplomats -- officially or on their own -- might have played in the U.N. plot. ABC News reported that employees of the Sudanese mission to the U.N. had been taped discussing the thwarted bombing, but U.S. investigators have yet to confirm any solid link suggesting that the Khartoum government sanctioned the conspiracy. The State Department's 1992 report "Patterns of Global Terrorism," published last April, concedes that "there is no evidence that the government of Sudan conducted or sponsored a specific terrorist attack in the past year."

Iran's interest in Sudan began after a fundamentalist-backed coup brought General Omar Hassan Bashir to power in 1989. Bashir immediately declared Sudan an Islamic state. Iran's President paid a call at the end of 1991, accompanied by his Defense and Intelligence ministers and the commander of the Revolutionary Guard. Reportedly, Iran agreed to provide Sudan with oil and technical aid in exchange for Sudanese livestock and wheat and promised to send Iranian Revolutionary Guards to train Sudanese Popular Defense Forces. U.S. officials say the Guards also offered instruction in subversion and guerrilla warfare for would-be terrorists. Tehran then sent Majid Kamal, the man who helped the Lebanese Shi'ites organize Hizballah, as its ambassador to Sudan.

Sudan has long enjoyed a reputation throughout the Islamic world for hospitality. Any Muslim is allowed to enter the country without a visa, no questions asked. Israeli intelligence sources say large numbers of fundamentalist Muslims who fought alongside the Afghans in their war against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul ended up in Sudan. Arab countries who had happily shipped off their extremists to Afghanistan were leery of taking them back. Egypt passed a law allowing the execution of any Egyptian who had undergone military training abroad.

British diplomats believe Sudan has also taken in many non-Iranian fundamentalists that Syria kicked out of Lebanon during the Gulf War. According to the British, most of these men are organized into combat units of company size serving at their own high-security camps. Others are trained as agitators and sent abroad. Still others, who might not number more than 100, are terrorists. The British sources say they are kept in five camps around Khartoum, equipped and financed mainly by Iran, though Palestinian groups also channel funds, weapons and orders to their own adherents. The annual budget for these groups is estimated to be $20 million, and they are supplied with arms ranging from sophisticated explosives to jeeps and trucks. The State Department says it also has information that Sudan has helped militant elements in Somalia, including General Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

Sudan's presence on the terrorist list makes little difference to Khartoum. Trade with the U.S. is now banned, but it was always modest. The designation formally denies Sudan all U.S. foreign assistance, except for about $71 million in humanitarian relief for southern Sudan's homeless and hungry people. In reality, economic and military aid has already been suspended. "The real thrust of this decision," says the State Department's McCurry, "will be to isolate Sudan from the community of civilized nations." That may only push Khartoum deeper into Tehran's embrace.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem, William Mader/London and Elaine Shannon/Washington