Alan Boswell reacts Sudan Radio Service Nairobi, 09/08/12 - A journalist who was accused by South Sudan of reporting allegations about Kiir’s’ apology letter to President Barack Obama says he will demand for a formal retraction from South Sudan. The accusation followed a report authored by a McClatchy Newspapers’ journalist, Alan Boswell, which indicated that President Kiir in his alleged letter accepted offering support to SPLM-North but could not admit in a meeting earlier with Obama in September 2011. On Monday, the minister of Information Barnaba Marial strongly dismissed the report, and slammed the writer of the article as being pro-Khartoum. However, in an interview with SRS on Thursday, Boswell who recently got denied a visa to Sudan by the authorities for his past reporting on the humanitarian crisis in Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan areas said the accusations were ridiculous. “It is completely ridiculous and baseless charge and the government knows that. It seems they are just trying to discredit the information that I am reporting through desperate means. Anybody who has read my reporting on Sudan knows that it is ridiculous to say I am paid off by them. My report about President Kiir writing an apology letter to President Obama is very well sourced as I wrote in my article, including by former US officials with direct knowledge of the letter’s contents. The information is absolutely correct. No US official contradicted my reporting or demanded a retraction and no representative of South Sudanese government has contacted either me or my newspaper company with information to contradict what I reported,” said Mr. Boswell. Boswell revealed that his company, McClatchy Newspapers, will take action against the South Sudan government. “My newspaper company will be demanding a formal retraction. Governments often try to discard a reporting that they don’t like but you can accuse a journalist of being a paid agent of another country that has no any proof,” said the journalist. McClatchy, a California-based newspaper chain, is the third largest US newspaper chain, comprising of 30 newspapers.
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