Turabi founded the annual Popular Arab and Islamic Conference in 1991.Here several Islamic groups all over the world attended the conference including representatives from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Hamas, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Algerian Islamic Jihad,and Hezbollah.Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and joins against the commoc enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between Al Qaeda and Iranian Operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support--even if only training-- for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long aferwards, senior al-Qaeda operatives and trainers travelled to Iran to receive training in explosives.
In Aug 1993, Sudan was placed on the US's "list of state sponsored terorism", following the first World Trade Center bombing in Sep. 1991. The US state dep. notes that "five of 15 suspects arrested " following the bombing were Sudanese.
Two years later an assasssination attempt was made on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak by Egyptian Islamic Jihad organisation , many of whose members were living in exile in Sudan. Evidence from the Egyptian and Ethiopian Governments implicated the Sudanese Govt.
"The debacle led to a unanimous vote in the United Nations to impose stiff economic sanctions on Sudan. The Sudanese representative denied the charges, but the Sudanese delegation was already in disfavour, having been implicated only two years earlier in a plot to blow up UN headquarters ..."
Rather than disassociate from the plot, Turabi praised the attempted killing and called Mubarak stupid :
The sons of the prophet Moses, the Muslims, rose up against him confounded his plans, and sent him back to his country... I found the man to be very far below my level of thinking and my iew , and too stupid to understand my pronouncements.
