Abuja — A jolted Senate yesterday said it believes that Sudan's refusal to grant landing permit for the Senate President David Mark and members of his entourage comprising about ten Senators to land at the Khartoum Airport was not due to diplomatic row.

But the Chairman, Senate Committee on Interior, Senator Lekan Mustapha, believes otherwise, saying that the treatment meted to the Senate President was unacceptable.

He said the Sudanese government could not claim ignorance of the visit of Senator Mark to the troubled Dafur region.

Senator Mark, who was at the head of an entourage of Senators comprising mainly members of the Committee on Defence to Dafur, where Nigerian armed forces are serving in a hybrid UN/AU peace-keeping mission, as part of its oversight function, was refused landing rights by the Sudanese authorities.

He was forced to return home from Chad.

Briefing Senate correspondents in Abuja, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Ayogu Eze, said; "for now, I don't know if there is any diplomatic row. That is all I can say'.

He added that what happened was more of a technical problem.

He said that the Senate President and his colleagues had got as far as Chad when the Control Tower in Khartoum International Airport informed him that his plane will not land because of the repair work going on.

Senator Mark, according to him, got in touch with Nigeria's ambassador to Sudan who confirmed that he had similar information.

"In fact, they said the airport would re-open by 3pm, meaning that the Senate President who was already in Chad would have to wait for another seven hours or thereabout.

"So, at that point, the Senate President felt that the best thing to do was to return to Nigeria.

"We have already crossed- checked with the ambassadors; Nigeria's ambassador and that of the Sudan."

Nevertheless, Senator Mustapha, who spoke to LEADERSHIP in his office, said that despite the fact that he would not want to comment further on the incident, questioned the excuse given by the Sudanese government.

"I want to believe that they knew before hand that the President of the Senate would be visiting that country. It was planned ahead, so they knew he was coming and now this treatment.

"I am sure that with such treatment, the President of Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir, would never visit Nigeria," he said.

It would be recalled that some international and human rights groups had criticised President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua for inviting President Al-Bashir to Nigeria, saying that he was duty bound to execute an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on the Sudanese leader for various crimes against his people.