President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday said that Khartoum and Moscow have agreed on a programme to boost Sudan's military capabilities.

In an address to army officers and soldiers in the Red Sea town of Port Sudan, Bashir said the plan aimed to enable the Sudanese military to counter any threat.

He said "Sudan has a programme with Russia to develop the Sudanese armed forces in a way that will deter anybody who intends to harm the country", the official SUNA news agency reported.

SUNA gave not details of the plan.

Bashir's comments follow his visit to Russia in November, where according to Sudanese media he asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to "protect" his country from the United States.

The visit came just weeks after the United States lifted its trade embargo imposed on Sudan in 1997.

During his trip, Bashir also asked for Moscow's cooperation in the field of nuclear power, according to media reports.

Sudan's air force is comprised mainly of Russian warplanes, and the bulk of its military equipment has also been traditionally supplied by Moscow.

African Union head calls China spying report 'lies'
Beijing (AFP) Feb 8, 2018 - The African Union's chairman dismissed during a visit to Beijing on Thursday a French newspaper report alleging that China had spied on the continental body as "lies" intended to derail cooperation.

The report published by Le Monde in January claimed technicians at the AU's Chinese-built headquarters in the Ethiopian capital discovered last year that the contents of their computers had been regularly copied to servers in Shanghai since 2012, citing unnamed AU sources.

"I don't see it is in the interest of China to spy," AU commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said during a visit to Beijing, where he met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss deepening cooperation on a variety of issues, as well as opening a representative office in Beijing.

Standing next to Wang, he told reporters that the allegations were "all lies," adding that no story "can distract us or divert us from our relations."

The AU is not dealing with "secrets or defence", he said, and "I don't see how it is in the interest of China to offer such a building and spy."

For his part, Wang said the AU conference centre is "a symbol of Chinese-African friendship" and that China had "selflessly" built the building.

Some people, he said, "are jealous of China-Africa cooperation," suggesting that the report was an attempt to wrong-foot the relationship.

Le Monde said the AU's servers were changed and its IT systems redone after the copying was found.

The newspaper also reported that Ethiopian cyber security experts removed microphones hidden in the desks and walls of the headquarters.

China is deeply invested in Africa, regularly offering low-interest loans and gifts to individual nations and doing $149.2 billion (120.3 billion euros) in trade with the continent in 2016.

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