Sudan on Wednesday made a spirited defense of Islam and said Muslim nations, rather than the West, were the primary targets of terrorism. Mahdi Ibrahim, Sudan's information minister, said foreign ministers and senior officials from the 57 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference debated terrorism in a closed-door session. The meeting in Khartoum was mainly looking for a "strategic and comprehensive vision" to counter attempts to defame Islam and link it to terrorism, he said.

"We are a nation of dialogue and not confrontation with others," said Ibrahim, Sudan's chief delegate to the foreign ministers' meeting that opened Tuesday. "We are the nation that acknowledges all prophets, holy books and other religions. A nation that takes the middle ground by nature and harbors no hatred for others."

Ibrahim, who spoke in a news conference on the sidelines of the meeting, is a former Sudanese ambassador to Washington and a stalwart of Sudan's Islamic movement.

After nearly a decade of radical policies and anti-Western rhetoric that had earned it international isolation and the wrath of the West, Sudan has recently moderated its attitudes and shown interest in ending a long-running civil war in its south.

The changes brought improvement in relations with the United States and Europe.

"The Muslim nation is the real victim of terrorism and is terrorized every single day," he said. "It's bombed from the air sometimes, placed on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism at other times, and has its assets frozen on other occasions."

He was referring to the United States, which in 1993 added Sudan to the State Department's list of countries sponsoring terrorism, and five years later destroyed a pharmaceutical factory with a cruise missile for allegedly producing precursors for chemical weapons on behalf of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Washington says bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks terror attacks in the United States.

The missile attack followed the bombings in August 1998 of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, also blamed on bin Laden. The terror suspect lived in Sudan in the early 1990s.

Turning to relations with the United States, Ibrahim said: "We know that there are still in America pockets of hostility toward Sudan. But if America pursues a path of moderation, neutrality and dialogue with Sudan that will be conducive to a big success in relations."

U.S. President George W. Bush last week acknowledged cooperation from Sudan in the war on terror, but said "ending its support for terror outside Sudan was no substitute for efforts to stop war inside Sudan." That was a reference to the 19-year war against southern rebels that has so far claimed 2 million lives, mostly through war-induced famines.

Ibrahim, repeating an often used assertion by Muslim leaders these days, said Muslims have been the target of "campaigns of defamation and disinformation" since Sept. 11, but stressed that, under Sudan's guidance, the current OIC meeting was working for dialogue with non-Muslim nations and was determined to find ways to make the organization more effective.

"All participants ... are determined to counter this with dialogue, through the media, debate and the removal of falsehoods," he said. "Every delegate that spoke in Khartoum dealt with what we must do, with solidarity among Muslims the main concern."

Based in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC is the world's only pan-Islamic body represents an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims the world over. The 30-year-old body, however, has been largely ineffective, prompting Sudanese leader Omar el-Bashir Tuesday to call for "thorough" reforms in the organization.

PHOTO CAPTION

Sudanese men walk in front of a board advertising the 29th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, June 22, 2002, which will be held beginning June 25. Members of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic conference, OIC, will meet in the Sudanese capital to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other Islamic issues in the world. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)