News

USIS Washington 
File

25 June 1999

U.S. SUSPENDS OPERATIONS AT SIX EMBASSIES IN AFRICA

(No reduction in commitment to world presence, Rubin says) (390)
By Jane A. Morse
USIA Diplomatic Correspondent

Washington -- The United States has suspended operations at six of its
embassies in African nations for three days because of information
that these facilities have been "under surveillance by suspicious
individuals," State Department Spokesman James Rubin announced June
25.

The embassies affected are in Gambia, Togo, Madagascar, Liberia,
Namibia and Senegal. They will be closed June 24 through June 27.
Their status will be evaluated and a decision about reopening these
embassies will be made on Monday, June 28, the spokesman said.

All U.S. Embassies around the world have been placed an "a heightened
status of alert due to increased security concerns," Rubin said. He
noted that a number of U.S. Embassies in sub-Sahara Africa were closed
December 17-18, 1998 because of the "heightened threat environment"
following U.S. air strikes on Iraq. In addition, the U.S. Embassy in
Uganda has been closed on a few occasions due to security following
the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. Embassies in Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and
Congo-Brazzaville have been closed as a result of domestic political
instability in those countries he said. The U.S. Embassy in Sudan, he
noted, is open but operated by local employees only.

Rubin declined to elaborate on the intelligence information garnered
on the "suspicious individuals" involved in this latest round of U.S.
Embassy closings. But he noted that "we have seen a pattern of
activity indicating continued planning for terrorist attacks by
members of Usama Bin Laden's network." Bin Laden has been indicted in
the 1998 U.S.Embassy bombings in East Africa that killed 220
Americans, Tanzanians and Kenyans and injured another 5,000 people.

"We take reporting of such threats seriously," Rubin explained, but he
emphasized that taking precautions does not mean the United States is
retreating from a full international diplomatic presence.

Terrorists have not intimidated the United States, the spokesman said,
"We have foiled their objectives of stopping our determination to have
an American presence around the world and to interfere with our
determination as a global power to have an American troop presence in
various countries," he said. "We are not going to let these cowardly
terrorists who kill innocent people achieve their objectives."