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 Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار (Re: Kostawi)
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The New York Times
Khartoum Journal; Sudan Leader Waits, and Waits, for His Ship to Come In
January 31, 2006, Tuesday
By MARC LACEY (NYT); Foreign Desk
-Sudan's government pulled out all the stops for the h.eads of state who swept into town for the African Union summit conference last week. Streets were scrubbed and welcome signs erected. Elegant new villas, outfitted with fancy linen and china, were put up along the Nile. And then there...
was the fancy presidential yacht that was supposed to ferry the dignitaries up and down the river for evening soirees. Much like Sudan's hopes of assuming the chairmanship of the African Union at the conference, though, the boat never materialized.
Even after the presidents had come and gone, the yacht was nowhere to be found. It was not on the White Nile, which flows northward from Lake Victoria. Nor was it on the Blue Nile, which swoops into Khartoum from Ethiopia.
But Ibrahim Khalfalla never lost sight of the hulking craft, which has two decks and is 118 feet long and 32 feet wide. He was the man charged with getting the boat from Slovenia, where it was built for an estimated $4.5 million, to Sudan, where President Omar Hassan al-Bashir planned to inaugurate it. And although he missed his deadline, Mr. Khalfalla said he did the best he could under the circumstances.
"This is difficult, so difficult," he said, as the huge tractor-trailer that had been carrying the boat from Port Sudan to Khartoum by road inched close to its destination the other day. "You don't know how difficult."
It was actually rather easy to see how challenging a job this was. Even with the boat a mere 200 feet from the water's edge, serious obstacles remained, like the building that the precious cargo struck while Mr. Khalfalla motioned wildly at the man behind the wheel of the truck.
As the yacht scraped against a brick wall, onlookers let out a groan. Soon workers were atop the boat, prying away bricks.
It had been a long journey for Mr. Khalfalla, head of Ryckman's Shipping Transport Service Company. He said he picked up the boat in Slovenia late last year and reached Port Sudan on the Red Sea in about two weeks. That still gave him plenty of time to make it overland to Khartoum in time for the summit conference.
But carting such a massive load proved trickier than he imagined. He and his workers had to cut trees that were too close to the road. That was simple enough. Getting over four bridges was a challenge, because the 172-ton boat tested their weight limits. But he managed that as well.
It was the electrical wires hanging overhead that proved particularly nettlesome. He cut 132 of them along the way, plunging neighborhood after neighborhood into temporary darkness as the presidential boat went by.
"There are so many high-tension wires," he said as his workers continued prying away at the wall.
By that time the African Union meeting was over and Mr. Khalfalla was already looking ahead to future uses for the yacht, like a coming gathering of Arab leaders in Khartoum. He sees the craft as a sign of his country's progress, a symbol of its efforts to put on a new face to the world.
"The country is developing," he said. "We want any leaders who come to this country to be cared for. This boat will be for our important guests."
But even before the craft hit the water, it was taking on criticism from those who viewed it as an extravagant symbol of just how far removed the government is from the people.
Disparaged in newspapers as "Bashir's boat" and a "million-dollar toy," the craft, with its sophisticated satellite technology, elaborate presidential suite and dining facilities for 76 guests, left critics unimpressed.
The Juba Post, saying the government had "missed the boat," called on officials to donate it to the Red Cross as a floating hospital ship. "Children scrounge for food in Khartoum North," the paper said, not far from "the president's expensive shipwreck."
Another newspaper, The Khartoum Monitor, lamented that the government was using barges to take people displaced from the long war in the south back to their homes while the government imported a luxurious vessel for partying.
The summit meeting was supposed to have been Sudan's chance to shine. Shut off from the rest of the world for so long, Sudan's leaders are eager to attract outside investors and shed their pariah image.
But the transformation has proved harder than anyone here imagined. Mr. Bashir tried to become chairman of the African Union for the year, taking advantage of the custom of awarding the post to the host at the summit, but his colleagues rebuffed his bid because of the continuing war in Darfur, the country's western region. Even the peace agreement that the government reached a year ago to end the southern war — Africa's longest-running conflict — has been overshadowed by the fighting in the west.
Then there is the boat.
Mr. Khalfalla dismissed all the critics with a wave of the hand. He said that the country needed to modernize and that the yacht, which the government calls Al Qasr, or Palace, is a sign of that.
As he spoke, he gazed up at his workers, who were still prying away. The new boat looked old now, with the many scrapes on its sides from all the objects it had struck, but Mr. Khalfalla said a new paint job would take care of that.
He said he could not rest even once the yacht reached the water because another presidential boat, this one Chinese-made and even larger than the first, would be on its way soon. But focusing on the second boat was premature with the first one still out of water.
"This is the last obstacle," he said uncertainly as his workers appeared to free the presidential boat from the wall. Mr. Khalfalla has been through so much that he seemed to be trying to convince himself that nothing else could possibly go wrong.
"The water is just there," he said, motioning toward the river
(عدل بواسطة Kostawi on 02-15-2006, 01:11 PM)
(عدل بواسطة Kostawi on 02-15-2006, 01:27 PM)
(عدل بواسطة Kostawi on 02-15-2006, 01:28 PM)
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| العنوان |
الكاتب |
Date |
| اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 12:36 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 12:40 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 12:47 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Elmuez | 02-15-06, 12:47 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 12:56 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 01:10 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 02:43 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 02:51 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 03:26 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 03:40 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Tragie Mustafa | 02-15-06, 04:05 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 04:11 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-15-06, 04:12 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-16-06, 01:20 AM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | صديق الموج | 02-16-06, 01:32 PM |
| Re: اليخت الرئاسي....4,5 مليون دولار | Kostawi | 02-16-06, 04:41 PM |
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Kostawi
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