The Sudanese government on Wednesday denied claims by southern rebels that government forces had killed more than 1,000 people in a major offensive in south Sudan's main oil region.
"This is a figment of someone's imagination. The government has launched no offensive in that area," Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi told IRIN on Wednesday.
According to news agency reports, the alleged attacks began on Friday 26 July when government forces attacked rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) positions near the village of Tam, some 20km south of Bentiu, the main government town in western Upper Nile (Wahdah State).
Over the weekend, government Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships had been used to continue the offensive, the BBC quoted SPLA spokesman Samson Kwaje as saying. 
However, according to Dirdiery government- and rebel- allied militias had been involved in "low-level skirmishes" in an attempt to gain territory ahead of a possible ceasefire agreement. 
"The situation continues to be fragile without a comprehensive ceasefire," Dirdiery told IRIN.
Humanitarian sources told IRIN there was "every indication" to suggest that large numbers of people were killed in fighting over the weekend, but that the SPLM/A's estimates appeared to be inflated. "It is very unusual for 1,000 people to be reported dead as a consequence of fighting over a single weekend," sources said. 
Although the attacks appeared to be targeted against military personnel, rather than against civilians, there were "well-grounded fears" that large numbers of people had been displaced as a result of the fighting, they added. 
The reports come at a time when hopes have been raised for a lasting solution to Sudan's 19-year  civil war. Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir and SPLM/A chief John Garang held their first ever face-to-face meeting on Saturday 27 July, during which they endorsed a framework peace deal. 
Although the deal - named the Machakos Protocol - includes broad agreement on a number of key issues, such as self-determination for the south and the relations between church and state, arrangements have not yet been made for a comprehensive ceasefire.
Remaining issues, including the need for a comprehensive ceasefire as well as the sharing of the country's oil wealth, will be discussed during the next round of talks, scheduled to begin in mid-August, and held under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Three international aid workers working with the Christian relief organisation, World Vision, were kidnapped on Monday and one was killed during an attack in Waat, Upper Nile, southern Sudan.
"After fighting in the town, one Kenyan national was killed and another Kenyan and two Germans were kidnapped," Alison Preston, communications officer with World Vision told IRIN on Tuesday. "We don't know who did this, or why," she added.
"We are working with the United Nations to secure their release," she said.
The German news agency DPA quoted an official from Operation Lifeline Sudan - a consortium of UN agencies and international relief organisations working in Sudan - as saying the attack was against a prison which was about 100 metres behind the World Vision compound in Waat. "In the course of the firefight, it was a stray bullet that killed the Kenyan," he said.
UN and World Vision officials contacted by IRIN declined to comment on whether the current whereabouts of the three are known.

Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir and southern rebel leader, John Garang, on Saturday held their first ever face-to-face meeting in the Ugandan capital Kampala, and endorsed the recent signing of a framework peace deal. 
A communique issued by the Ugandan government said Bashir and Garang "applauded the breakthrough" and "undertook to ensure that all efforts are deployed to resolve outstanding issues". 
Siraj al-Din Hamid, the Sudanese charge d'affaires in Kampala, told IRIN on Monday that the two leaders would have discussed peace and "made expressions of seriousness about the Machakos agreement." 
The meeting had served to "break the ice" between the two men after 19 years of war, and had prepared the ground for the next round of talks, he added. 
The two leaders have attended peace talks in the past, but have conducted negotiations through mediators, never meeting face-to-face.
The framework peace agreement, formulated under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), was reached on 20 July in the Kenyan town of Machakos, and included broad agreement on two of the most difficult problems facing negotiators: the right to self-determination for the south, and the relationship between church and state.
Further talks are scheduled in Kenya for the middle of August, during which negotiators will focus on a comprehensive ceasefire, reform of the central administration to include southerners, and the sharing of Sudan's oil wealth. 
While welcoming the Machakos agreement and the leaders' meeting, aid agencies say a workable, comprehensive peace agreement is still some way off. In the coming talks, "the warring parties will be tasked with establishing a peace agreement that makes unity an attractive option for all Sudanese. This will not be an easy task," a spokesperson for CARE International told IRIN on Monday. 
The meeting took place after a recent thaw in relations between Khartoum and Kampala, with the two countries in April agreeing to re-establish full diplomatic ties, severed in 1995 after Khartoum accusing Uganda of supporting the rebel SPLM/A. 
The Sudanese government in March gave the Ugandan army permission to pursue the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in Sudanese territory, and said it had stopped supporting the Ugandan rebel movement. 
In separate talks with Museveni, Bashir reiterated his government's "commitment to continue cooperation with Uganda regarding the current military measures" being undertaken by the Ugandan army against the LRA in southern Sudan.
"The relations with Uganda are quite perfect," Al-Din Hamid said.

A Sudanese "Special Court" has sentenced 87 people to death in Nyala, Southern Darfur province, for their involvement in clashes with another tribe, according to the Sudanese News Agency (SUNA). 
A further eight defendants were acquitted and one sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, the report said on Wednesday. 
Those sentenced are members of the Rizeigat tribe, who were arrested following an attack on a village in southern Darfur which belongs to a rival tribe, known as the Ma'aliya. 
The clashes - a "revenge attack" after a Rizeigat tribal member was killed - left 54 people dead, Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, the charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Thursday.
The advocacy group, Organisation mondiale contre la torture (OMCT), reported on Tuesday that two of those sentenced to death were only 14 years-old. It also claimed 35 detainees were tortured.
Commenting on the allegations, Dirdiery said that according to Sudanese law, people sentenced to death could not be under 18 years of age. "If there is such a case, there would definitely be room to appeal," he said.
He added that the allegations of torture could not be correct as the crimes had been committed in daylight and therefore witnessed.
The lawyer acting on behalf of the defendants, Mohamed Fadl Hamid, submitted an appeal to the district chief of justice on 20 July, OMCT reported, but fears remain that the sentences may be carried out very quickly if the appeal fails. 
Although both the Rizeigat and the Ma'aliya tribes are of Arabic origin, OMCT reported that elements of the Ma'aliya had joined with Sudanese government forces during recent attacks against the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south of the country. The Rizeigat have reportedly accused the government of supporting the Ma'aliya as a result.
Sudanese Special Courts were established in accordance with the State of Emergency Act 1998, by the governors of Southern and Northern Darfur Provinces, to deal with crimes of armed robbery, crimes against the state, as well as crimes relating to drugs and "public nuisance".

The United States and the United Nations have both hailed a framework peace deal signed between the Sudanese government and southern rebels in the Kenya town of Machakos on Saturday.
"The signing of the Machakos Protocol by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement is a significant step in moving towards a just and lasting peace," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who met Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir in Khartoum earlier this month, welcomed the progress made in the peace negotiations. 
In a statement released by spokesman Fred Eckhard, the Secretary-General expressed the hope "that the parties to the peace talks will be able to build on the momentum so that they can reach a definitive agreement in their next round". 
The talks have been taking place in Machakos, Kenya, under the auspices of the Sudan Peace Committee of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Negotiations are expected to resume in Kenya in August to reach agreement on remaining issues, including how best to distribute income from oil reserves, and arrangements for a comprehensive ceasefire.
"The interim measure is a strong indication that the parties are both willing and capable of reaching a negotiated settlement to Sudan's civil war," Boucher said. 
The framework deal includes broad agreement on two of the most contentious issues that have faced negotiators working in Sudan: the right to self-determination for the south, and the relationship between state and religion.
A referendum on self-determination for the south is planned after a six-year interim period, and the southern states have secured exemption from the imposition of Sharia'ah (Islamic) law. 
During the interim period, an independent assessment and evaluation commission will be established to monitor implementation of the agreement, which will include representatives of the Sudanese government, the SPLM/A, and observer states such as the US, Boucher said
The agreement also provides for a pre-interim period of six months, during which the parties would cease hostilities, establish institutions and mechanisms agreed in the Protocol, implement mechanisms to monitor the peace agreement, and establish a constitutional framework in accordance with the peace agreement, he said. 
The accord was also broadly welcomed by analysts and aid agencies. "This is a great first step, but it is only a beginning in terms of the work that needs to be done," a regional analyst told IRIN. It was important, however, that the international community, and the US in particular, maintain pressure on the parties, and also bring on board other interested governments.
The IGAD peace process, which started in 1993, has previously been criticised by many analysts and aid agencies for its failure to achieve tangible results. However, the process had become much more effective in recent months as a result of the closer involvement of observer countries, including the US, the UK and Norway, regional experts told IRIN.
During his recent visit to Khartoum, Annan and Bashir discussed the IGAD peace process, and the importance of a peace deal for the improvement of humanitarian access to conflict-affected populations in the south. 
Annan said on Monday he was confident that "once a definitive peace agreement is reached, the international community will be ready to provide the necessary assistance for its full implementation."

The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on Saturday said they had agreed on a framework deal for ending the country's 19-year civil war
Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Monday that the parties had "agreed on a framework that addresses all the major issues".
In particular, agreement had been reached on two of the most contentious issues - the relation between church and the state, and self-determination for the south.
SPLM/A spokesman Samson Kwaje told IRIN on Monday both sides had agreed that southerners would be given the opportunity to vote in a referendum on self-determination after an interim period of six years. People of the south would be given two clear options - to maintain the unity of Sudan under the interim arrangements, or to vote for secession of the south, he said.
During the interim period, Sudan would be governed with a "federal set-up", under which south  Sudan would be given special status, making it exempt from the imposition of Shari'ah (Islamic) law. A central, national constitution would also be established to guarantee freedom of belief, he said.
Implementation of the agreement would mean a large degree of devolution of power to the south, and the establishment of a bicameral legislature, which would include opposition parties from the north as well as the south, Kwaje said. 
"We are talking of a new Sudan," Kwaje said. "There will be an overhaul of the central administration."
The agreement comes after five weeks of talks in the Kenyan town of Machakos, under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). 
According to Kwaje, talks would resume on 12 August to work out details of the agreement. These would include discussions on wealth sharing, the precise forms of governance during the interim period, security, and a comprehensive ceasefire.
The peace deal would only come into effect after a comprehensive ceasefire had been agreed, Kwaje said. The SPLM/A has repeatedly rejected government offers of a comprehensive ceasefire, claiming Khartoum would take advantage of a cessation of hostilities to "further its war aims".
The contentious issue of the distribution of oil revenues would be included in discussion on wealth sharing, as well as how best to utilise the country's forests and to divide income from customs duties, Kwaje said. 
The agreement has been favourably received by many in the humanitarian community. 
"We are very encouraged by the news and hope that when negotiations resume in August that the parties will build on the accord," Will Day, Executive Director of CARE UK, said in a statement on Monday. 
"Ultimately, humanitarian agencies look forward to a sustained and just peace, which brings an end to the human suffering which Sudanese have endured for nearly 20 years," he said. 

Government warplanes dropped 12 bombs on the town of Ikotos, Eastern Equatoria, on Friday, seriously wounding two people, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Torit.
"Our place has been targeted on three consecutive bombings and we don't understand why," Jervasio Okot, of the Nairobi Social Communications Office of the Diocese of Torit, south Sudan, told IRIN on Tuesday. "These are social places, they are out of the military area."
The bombers had also attacked Ikotos on 26 June, demolishing the house of a local priest, and again on 29 June, when another building in the church premises was destroyed, the Nairobi office of the Torit Diocese stated on 12 July. 
"Consequently, the civil population in Ikotos is in a constant state of fear", it said.
The Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi had no immediate comment.
Okot said the Antonov bombers were also seen over the area on five occasions on Monday, but did not drop any bombs. "The people had to go into hiding and could not even prepare food during the day," he said.
The government could, he said, be targeting Ikotos and the surrounding area as a result of the capture by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in June of the garrison town of Kapoeta, some 120 km east of the town of Torit. Government aircraft could be hoping to target rebels in the villages around Kapoeta, he added. The Sudanese army denied, last week, bombing civilians in Kapoeta after losing control of the town. 
"According to information obtained by the armed forces, there are no civilians inside Kapoeta top be a target for bombing," AFP quoted military spokesman Gen Muhammad Bashir Sulayman as saying on 6 July. 
Southern Sudanese Catholic church officials claimed that government aircraft had bombed Kapoeta on 1 July, killing five people and injuring seven, AFP said. The attacks come at a time when preparations are being made for the creation of a US-led international team to monitor attacks on civilian targets.
The head of the monitoring mission, a former US army general, Herbert Lloyd, visited Khartoum last week to begin setting up his office, news agencies reported. The team would comprise 23 to 25 people, and would be based in Khartoum and the southern town of Rumbek, diplomatic sources told IRIN on Monday. "But as of now we don't know who the members of that international coalition will be," sources said.
Okot called on the international community to provide protection for the people of south Sudanese people against further attacks.
"The bishops, the clergy, and the laity strongly appeal the IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development], and the International Community for intervention, and to declare a no fly zone for the protection of the downtrodden Sudanese", he said. 
 
 

Annan secures partial lifting of aid restrictions

The Sudanese government has agreed to relax restrictions on humanitarian access to all but 18 sensitive locations in conflict-affected south Sudan, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week.
"We have agreed that there is a need for comprehensive access, except in 18 locations, where for security reasons, the government believes it is not safe for them to operate," Annan said at the end of a two-day visit to Khartoum on 11 July. 
However, he added that these locations would be kept "under review". "As the situation changes, those will be looked at and hopefully opened up," he said. Annan did not give details of the areas. 
He said Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir had agreed on the need for "comprehensive" humanitarian access for aid deliveries. "The president and I agreed that food needs to get to the needy, and that humanitarian workers must have free and unfettered access," Annan said.
Humanitarian sources told IRIN on Monday that, following Annan's visit, access restrictions had been lifted on 23 locations. Although agencies had been allowed to access these locations by road or barge (but not by air), the Sudanese government had previously told aid workers it could not guarantee their safety, the sources said. 
However, all "at risk" populations in Sudan should be given unimpeded and sustained access to humanitarian assistance according to the provisions of International Humanitarian Law, the Geneva Conventions and the OLS Beneficiary Protocol, an aid worker told IRIN on Monday. 
"We find it unacceptable that violations of these fundamental rights and humanitarian principles are occurring," she added.
Annan said his talks with Bashir had also paid close attention to the current state of peace talks underway in Kenya to bring an end to the country's 19-year civil war. Five weeks of peace talks, held under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), are scheduled to end on 20 July. 
"I think we do have a very good climate at the moment," Annan said. "There are very, very encouraging signs."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday concluded a two-day visit to Khartoum, during which he discussed humanitarian access and the ongoing peace process with the Sudanese government and major aid agencies.
"I come at a time when the peace process has been re-energised, and we see some good signs," Annan said.
Aid agencies have expressed hopes that Annan's visit would improve their access to conflict-affected populations in south Sudan. Repeated denials of humanitarian access by the Sudanese government and an escalation of the conflict in several areas of south Sudan have renewed concerns about the humanitarian situation of up to 1.7 million people. 
Asked whether he was concerned about government flight bans in the south, Annan said on Wednesday the UN was always "extremely disturbed if we do not have free and unfettered access to those in need". He also expressed confidence that the Sudanese government would "share my concern that we do not want to see anyone in need deprived" of assistance. 
During his visit, Annan met Sudanese government officials - including President Umar Hasan al-Bashir and Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il, - UN staff, and representatives of non-governmental organisations, including CARE, Oxfam, and Save the Children UK.
A spokeswoman for CARE International told IRIN on Friday that the inability to secure unimpeded access meant aid agencies had been unable to assess accurately the extent of human suffering, and were unable to provide ongoing assistance to those in most need.
"The UN's leadership role in securing access is crucial and needs to be given immediate and high level attention," she said. 
The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on Friday said the government of Sudan had declared a "scorched earth policy" in large areas of oil-rich western Upper Nile, and was using humanitarian access denials as "one of its weapons" in the country's 19-year civil war. 
Elijah Malok Aleng, executive director of the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA) - the SPLM/A's humanitarian wing - called on Annan to visit SPLM/A-controlled areas to "see the human devastation that has been done by the GOS [Government of Sudan] since the start of this war".
Five weeks of peace talks being held in Kenya under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) are scheduled to end on 20 July. 
While the talks were initially hailed as a key opportunity to advance the peace process, the recent escalation of fighting has led some observers - including Kenyan legislators and civil society groups - to call for their suspension.
"Like all concerned, I am hopeful that the parties will come to an agreement before they conclude their meeting on 20 July, and then build on it," Annan said.

The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has agreed to the extension of a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan, sources close to the rebel group told IRIN.
"They [SPLM/A] have agreed to the extension for a further six months following the SPLM/A-Nuba congress," the sources said. 
In June, the Sudanese government agreed to an extension of the initial six month ceasefire period, Usamah Mahjub Hasan, Second Secretary at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Tuesday. The government also agreed that the ceasefire provisions would remain unchanged for the additional period.
The government and SPLM/A-Nuba signed the renewable six-month ceasefire in the 80,000 sq km Nuba Mountains region, Southern Kordofan State, on 19 January this year. The agreement followed six days of closed-door negotiations facilitated by the US and Swiss governments in Burgenstock, central Switzerland.
The ceasefire agreement states, among other things, that both parties should "facilitate humanitarian assistance" by opening up humanitarian corridors and creating conditions "conducive to the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance".
However, humanitarian agencies have warned that bureaucratic issues and delays in implementing some aspects of the agreement had contributed to an erosion of confidence in the ceasefire agreement, particularly in SPLM/A-controlled areas. 
The government agreed in January to "unfettered humanitarian access to Nuba" but had continued to delay and deny flights into SPLM/A-controlled areas until mid-May - just weeks before the rainy season would make airstrips inaccessible there, Roger Winter of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) told a US Congressional hearing in June. 
However, humanitarian flight clearance had subsequently been placed under the aegis of the body charged with overseeing the ceasefire - the Joint Monitoring Commission - and not the Sudanese government, leading to "an overall feeling of optimism" in the Nubas, Winter added.
Philip Nuer of the Nuba Relief and Rehabilitation Development Organisation told IRIN that although some tools and seeds had been delivered to the Nuba people ahead of the rainy season, delays meant many people had not had time to clear land in preparation for planting.
"It [the ceasefire] has been extended, but it doesn't mean people are happy," he said. "Not enough has been done up until now." 

Kenyan legislators and civil society groups have criticised the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) for its "failure" to successfully broker Sudanese peace talks currently underway in Kenya.
Mwandawiro Mghanga, the coordinator of the Kenya-Sudan Friendship Society told IRIN on Thursday he doubted IGAD's ability to "bring peace" to Sudan if it was "unable to bring pressure to bear on the Khartoum government to halt the killing of civilians". 
"The Kenyan government [which currently chairs IGAD] and IGAD, are both not serious," he said. "They should be able to tell the Sudanese government that bombing civilians in the south is unacceptable."
He added that it was "morally wrong" to talk peace "when a government is murdering its own people". "It has destroyed any level of trust that can be used as a basis of holding talks," he stated. 
Analysts had hailed the talks, which began on 17 June, as a decisive opportunity for negotiators to push forward the peace process between the Muslim-dominated north of the country and the mostly-Christian south. Sticking points, such as self determination for the south and the separation of religion and state, have hitherto held up the process. 
However on Thursday, the Kenyan media reported that Kenyan MPs had urged IGAD chairman, President Daniel arap Moi, to stop the ongoing Sudanese peace talks taking place in the eastern Kenyan town of Machakos "until the Khartoum government puts a stop to the fighting in the south".
"The Sudanese government is bombing innocent civilians in the southern area of the country. The victims of the bombs are children and women. We should stop the talks until Sudan commits itself fully," the 'Daily Nation' quoted MP Gitobu Imanyara as saying.
The MPs' comments follow recent reports of the government bombing of Kapoeta, a key garrison town in southern Sudan, in which seven people were reportedly killed. 
The escalation of conflict in the south also has raised renewed fears over the humanitarian situation of up to 1.7 million people. The region most at risk is Western Upper Nile, where intense fighting since January has caused frequent and massive displacement of civilians, according to Andrew Nations, USAID's humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.
"The government's denial of flight access to the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan (UN/OLS) for numerous areas in opposition-held southern Sudan is precipitating an alarming humanitarian situation about which the United States is deeply concerned," Nations said in a statement received by IRIN. 
He said that despite numerous agreements by the Sudanese government to provide free and unimpeded access to war-affected populations, Khartoum had continued to severely restrict access to Western Upper Nile in recent months, where more than 300,000 people are estimated to be in need of immediate assistance.

A major humanitarian crisis is feared in areas of southern Sudan, where heavy fighting has been underway for the past few weeks, despite ongoing peace talks in Kenya. 
Southern Sudan has been the scene of fierce fighting between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) since 1983. However, fighting in recent months, had reached its "deadliest phase", the Brussels-based think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), warned on 28 June. 
Media reports said a government aircraft bombed the town of Kapoeta, a key southern garrison, which the SPLA captured from government forces on 9 June, killing seven civilians. The reports come barely a week after the Catholic church reported that a government military aircraft bombed a church compound in Ikotos town, in eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan. 
On Sunday, the Sudanese media in Khartoum reported that the army had re-captured Gogrial town, in Bahr El Ghazal province, from the SPLA. However, Samson Kwaje, the SPLM/A spokesperson in Nairobi, said the rebels withdrew from Gogrial for "tactical reasons".
In a hard-hitting report, the ICG said oil revenues had enabled the Sudanese government to purchase more weapons and adopt "more brutal tactics" in driving civilians out of oil-rich areas. Meanwhile, the SPLM/A had acquired additional quantities of sophisticated weapons, enabling it to engage government troops in "more intensive conventional" battles, it said. 

Humanitarian access could be impeded 
This escalation could further impede humanitarian access to the region, in addition to frequent relief flight denials by the warring parties to vast areas of the disputed regions in the south, humanitarian sources warned. 
The parties to the peace talks - under the auspices of the regional body, Intergovernmental Authority on Drought (IGAD) - have declined to comment on the situation. Muhammad Ahmad Dirdery, the charge d'affaires at the Sudan Embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Wednesday he was not in a position to comment either on the escalation of conflict in the south, nor the progress of the ongoing peace talks. "I am unable to comment on this matter at this time," Dirdery stressed.
Walter Kensteiner, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, who has been travelling in the region, has however expressed confidence that the talks may yield results on some of the tough issues such as self determination for the south, as well as the separation of religion and state, which are at the heart of the 19-year old conflict.
The Sudanese government has already agreed to extend for a month an agreement that allowed humanitarian access to victims of the war in southern Sudan, following a meeting this week between Kensteiner and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But the recent escalation of the conflict continues to raise humanitarian concerns for thousands of affected civilians. 
Kensteiner's visit this week is broadly seen as an effort to raise the profile of the peace talks and set the pace for negotiating humanitarian access to disputed regions, particularly the western Upper Nile region, ahead of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's planned visit to Sudan this month. 
Humanitarian agencies - which last week carried out a five-day "stop-gap intervention" in western Upper Nile - warned that a serious humanitarian crisis was in the offing in this region if fighting continued and the aid community could not secure access. 
A joint meeting of Sudan donors and aid agencies in early June strongly suggested that access to such key locations should be maintained for enough time to allow "meaningful interventions", and not just "hit-and-run activities". However, agencies are stuck for the moment with what access they can secure, humanitarian sources told IRIN.

Bashir optimistic 
The Sudanese government - which has insisted on a comprehensive ceasefire throughout the country before negotiating a final settlement to the conflict - has, during the course of the peace talks, indicated a growing optimism over the prospects for peace. In an address to the nation on 30 June, Bashir said he believed some "headway" was being made at the peace talks. 
"Indeed, peace is definitely coming since the people have realised, after a painful experience, that the war has lost meaning and logic," he said in a speech broadcast live on Sudanese television. 
"It [the war] means nothing to the people except killing destruction, hunger, homelessness, and backwardness," he added.
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Four Kenyan construction workers were among those injured this week when a Sudanese government aircraft bombed the Catholic bishop's compound in Ikotos town, Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, the Sudan Catholic Bishops Regional Conference (SCBRC) said on Thursday.
In a statement it released from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, SCBC said the attack occurred on Tuesday night, when an Antonov aircraft bombed the residence of Bishop Johnson Akio Mutek, the auxiliary bishop of Torit Diocese. 
The statement, signed by John Tanza Mabusu, the SCBRC's communications coordinator, said the aircraft had dropped four bombs directly into the compound, damaging the priests' quarters, offices and a newly constructed youth centre. "Everything has been destroyed," Mutek said in the statement. "The bombs destroyed my residence to the ground, damaging 10 solar panels, radio communications equipment, one truck and other important diocesan properties."
SCRBC said  the same aircraft had also dropped 12 bombs on Isoke, a mission 48 km east of Ikotos, diocese of Torit primary and secondary schools in Isoke with the capacity of over 500 children, but said it could not confirm the details. 
This was second time this week that Sudanese government aircraft had allegedly bombed civilian targets in the south, despite ongoing peace talks between the warring parties in Nairobi under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.
On Monday, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) claimed that a government aircraft had bombed a village in northern Bahr al-Ghazal. In a statement, SPLM/A said a high-altitude Antonov bomber had dropped six bombs on Malwal Kon village, which had fallen 20 metres away from the compound of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a US-based aid organisation working in the area, killing at least four civilians and injuring five more. 
According to the SPLM/A statement, Malwal Kon has no military significance since SPLM/A had no base in its vicinity, but it is home to several UN organisations and humanitarian NGOs. "The attack was therefore aimed at non-military targets - mostly the civil population, a church and compounds of humanitarian organisations," the statement noted.
It said the SPLM/A "strongly condemns the NIF [National Islamic Front] regime for this indiscriminate bombing that is intended to inflict grave and unjustifiable damage on the civil population. We also deplore the regime's targeting of NGOs and other civil institutions with the sole purpose of interrupting the flow of humanitarian assistance and relief distribution."

International human rights groups have expressed concern over what they describe as a "sharp increase" in death sentences this year in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
The London-based human rights organisation, Amnesty International (AI), on Friday said it considered the Sudanese penal code, which is based on the Islamic [sharia] law as "cruel, inhuman and degrading". Punishments under sharia include limb amputations and death by crucifixion. The organisation said this was inconsistent with international human rights law.
According to AI, at least 19 people have been executed in Darfur since the beginning of this year, without being given the opportunity to defend themselves, as required by international law.  "Many more run the risk of losing their lives unless this alarming trend is halted," it warned. 
"This is state-sanctioned killing at its worse, with those suspected having little or no recourse to defend themselves," AI said. "The judicial authorities in Sudan must ensure that all prisoners are guaranteed every opportunity to defend themselves, including the right of appeal to a higher tribunal, and to seek commutation of the sentence."
According to AI, emergency courts were established in both Northern and Southern Darfur in May 2001 to deal with offences such as armed robberies, murders and the illegal possession of weapons. The courts are headed by two military judges and one civilian judge, and do not allow representation of the accused until the appeal stage of the proceedings, the rights organisation said. 

The civil war in Sudan has in recent months reached its "deadliest phase", due to the increased acquisition of lethal weapons by both sides, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned. This was enabling them to fight more conventional and frequent engagements, not only killing a greater number of soldiers but also producing more extensive collateral damage than before.
In a hard-hitting report, released on Thursday, the Brussels-based international think-tank said oil revenues had enabled the Sudanese government to purchase more weapons and adopt "more brutal tactics" in driving civilians out of oil areas. Meanwhile, the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) had acquired additional quantities of sophisticated weapons, enabling it to engage government troops in "more intensive conventional" battles. 
"After nearly two decades, the Sudanese civil war has reached its deadliest phase. Both sides have more lethal weapons and are fighting more conventional battles," the ICG report, entitled, "Dialogue of Destruction: Organising for peace as the war in Sudan escalates", said. 
According to the report, released to coincide with a new round of talks, which opened in  the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 17 June, under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the bloodiest battles in Sudan's history had been fought during this past dry season between January and June.
The Sudanese conflict began in 1983, when the Sudanese government, led at the time by former President Ja'far Numayri, imposed Islamic shari'ah law on the entire country, including the mostly Christian and animist south. At least two million people, mainly civilians, have been killed in the war since then, according to humanitarian sources. 
Meanwhile, peace efforts have been bogged down, because, as frequently claimed by key countries within the wider international community, they "lacked leverage" to move the warring parties towards peace. "Leverage does not grow on trees. It is created through leadership in the development of a multilateral strategy and its judicious execution," the report said.
"Western countries must refrain from repeating such statements, as they increase perceptions among Sudanese parties that the leverage the West does enjoy will not be used during the new set of negotiations - perceptions that in fact reduce outside leverage in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophesy," it added. 
The major sticking points dividing Sudanese parties include the separation of religion and state, and the distribution of power and wealth. However, self-determination for the south, appears to stand above other issues as the potential "ultimate spoiler" of the peace process, according to ICG.
It went on to say that the divergent positions held by the warring parties were too entrenched to be reconciled through conventional facilitation alone. ICG was therefore urging the regional players, and key players from the international community with influence on both sides to use their leverage to compel both parties to move towards peace. 
"More forceful diplomatic intervention will be required than is currently envisioned," its report said. "The most visible missing ingredient of a potentially successful IGAD peace effort is coordination of pressures and incentives."
The ICG urged the US government, which joined the efforts to achieve peace in Sudan late last year, to "work closely" with Egypt, Sudan's "most important neighbour", to lead efforts to support the peace process. At the same time, the US and other international players, such as Norway and the UK, should "signal high-level political commitment" on their part by devoting political resources to the process. 
"With battle lines and negotiating positions so clearly drawn, the efforts to energise the IGAD peace process have so far been useful, but not sufficient. The window of opportunity for peace in Sudan is beginning to close. A much more robust effort must be undertaken both by the IGAD states and, in their support, by the international community if peace is to be made," ICG said its statement released. 
"In the first instance, this requires quick construction of a considerably more detailed peace strategy, including the organisation and deployment of serious leverage. Absent this, the Sudanese people will be condemned to increasing death and destruction, and a wide swathe of Africa will remain subject to the destabilising consequences," it added.

The EU on Tuesday expressed grave concern about the humanitarian situation in many parts of Sudan, particularly in western Upper Nile (Unity/Wahdah State), Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal - all in the south and affected by serious fighting.
Noting the universal humanitarian principle that "civilian populations must be protected from the consequences of military operations", the EU called for "unrestricted, immediate and unlimited access by international humanitarian agencies" to assist these populations, whether directly or indirectly affected by the conflict.
For the past three months, western Upper Nile has been one of the areas most affected by flight denials to aid agencies, while access has also been denied in wide areas of Bahr al-Ghazal, Equatoria and Bahr al-Jabal, according to aid workers. Humanitarian actors working in Sudan estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced in western Upper Nile alone between January and April.
Humanitarian agencies - currently engaged in a five-day "stop-gap intervention" in western Upper Nile - warn that a serious humanitarian crisis is in the offing in this region if fighting continues and the aid community cannot secure access. 
A joint meeting of donors to Sudan and aid agencies in early June strongly suggested that access to such key locations should be maintained for long enough to allow "meaningful interventions", and not just hit-and-run activities, but agencies are stuck for the moment with what access they can secure, according to humanitarian sources.
The UN and the US have made strong calls for unimpeded humanitarian access in recent months - the latter remarking at a US Congressional hearing on 5 June that there was "an inextricable link" between its peace efforts and more immediate gains on humanitarian access and respect for human rights.
Donors to Sudan and aid agencies operating under the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) umbrella came out in early June with "a clear and unambiguous message" to all parties in Sudan to ensure "unimpeded humanitarian access to all populations in need". In particular, they called for increased access to key locations in western Upper Nile and Eastern Equatoria, before the imminent arrival of the rainy season, which will hamper aid interventions. 
The joint donors' meeting noted "an increasing number of instances" where access and humanitarian principles were being subverted by administrative procedures, and the impression that the intention was to add restrictions, create ambiguity and "deny people in need".
In its statement on Tuesday, the EU also welcomed the opening of substantive peace negotiations in Kenya last week (17 June) - expected to last several weeks - between the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SDLM/A), under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). 
It called on the government and SPLM/A to decisively engage in the IGAD peace process, and reiterated its appeal "for a comprehensive ceasefire as part of a comprehensive and just peace negotiation process".
Recent months have seen the US, in particular, seek to inject new life into the IGAD peace process (which has shown little success over the years) in conjunction with Kenya, leading the process from within IGAD, as well as the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Egypt and other states. 
"The consensus among the parties to the conflict and countries coordinating with the US is that instead of introducing an entirely new proposal, peace negotiations will only develop momentum and succeed if they are undertaken through an existing framework to which both parties are agreed in principle," US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Walter H. Kansteiner stated in a recent outline of American policy on Sudan.
The IGAD framework was "the only vehicle for peace that fits this need at this time" and - with several key points from a separate Egyptian-Libyan Initiative (ELI) included - was "the strongest and most viable forum for peace discussions", he said.
[http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/10925.htm]
More importantly, Kansteiner added, "the IGAD framework is the only agreement signed by both parties to the conflict that resolves and acknowledges critical issues like self-determination for the south, religion and state, and governance". 
The EU stated on Tuesday that it was ready to support the process of economic and social development through linkages between relief, rehabilitation and development with a view to alleviating poverty, "subject to progress toward a peace settlement".
After nine years of trying, and failing, to resolve the Sudanese civil war, IGAD is trying to steer a new course, with the Kenyan special envoy, Gen Lazarus Sumbeiywo, pursuing a strict agenda and time frame "in a do-or-die negotiating effort", according to John Prendergast, co-director of the Africa programme of the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Negotiating peace in Sudan is beyond the scope of IGAD alone, and will require greater commitment, effort and leverage on the part of the broader international community, in close partnership with regional states, if it is to succeed, he said.
"In the absence of such a commitment, the best chance in years to end a generation of war will surely slip away," Prendergast told the US Congress on 5 June.

Church World Service (CWS), an umbrella group of Christian organisations in the US, has appealed for urgent support for relief efforts to assist thousands of families displaced in Rubkona County, southern Sudan, by government military action in the oil-rich area.
CWS said in a statement on Monday that it was helping partner organisations in the area to assist some 4,000 families (comprising 3,000 internally displaced and 1,000 host families) around Chotchar and Touc.
The flat scrub of the Upper Nile region offered no protection from the government's aerial bombardments or attacks by helicopters, it said, and people had crossed many small rivers and swamps in search of whatever limited security they could find.
The government has launched "a massive dry-season offensive in the oilfields [including western Upper Nile]... aided by thousands of its forces, redeployed as a result of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire [in Southern Kordofan]," John Prendergast, co-director for Africa of the International Crisis Group, told a US Congressional hearing on 5 June. 
Khartoum has consistently denied that it is targeting civilian populations in oil areas, saying that it aims to make the areas safe for oil operations, and has accused the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) of escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity State/western Upper Nile.
The internally displaced people (IDPs) who are being reached in western Upper Nile are receiving blankets, family-sized mosquito nets, cooking pots, tarpaulins for makeshift shelters, fishing equipment and hand tools, according to CWS. 
Families hosting the IDPs were also receiving mosquito nets and fishing equipment, while CWS's local partners were bring trained on ways of improving their capacity to respond to this and future emergencies, it said.
"Support is urgently needed for these relief and recovery efforts," the agency added. CWS is the relief, development, and refugee assistance ministry of 36 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations, and works with indigenous organisations in more than 80 countries "to support sustainable self-help development, refugee and emergency needs, and help address the root causes of poverty and powerlessness".
[http://www.churchworldservice.org/]
CWS called on the public to urge the US to stay involved in Sudan as long as human rights continued being violated, and to continue in its search for peace. It also urged people to urge the US Senate leadership to push forward with the Sudan Peace Act so that the discussion of capital market sanctions could move forward.
Humanitarian, religious and human rights groups have repeatedly spoken of a link between oil exploration and extraction in Upper Nile, and alleged a "scorched earth" policy by the government to depopulate oil areas and make them safe for oil production.
They have also claimed that oil revenues had enabled the Sudanese government to double its military expenditure in the last two years, escalating the violence in the 19-year-old civil war.
Numerous speakers suggested at the 5 June US Congressional hearing on Sudan that the US should move forward with this act (currently languishing in legislative limbo) in order to provide leverage on oil companies involved in Sudan, and thus on the Sudanese government, to engage meaningfully in a peace process.
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter H. Kansteiner said the White House was opposed to sections of the proposed legislation which would sanction access oil companies active in Sudan, because it would set "a precedent for political interference in US capital markets".
American companies are already barred from investing in Sudan, which remains on Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism. 
The Sudanese ambassador to the US, Khidr Harun Ahmad, has said pressure groups intent on distorting Sudan's image are promoting the Sudan Peace Act.
Sanctions against international firms engaged in oil production in Sudan would "eliminate even the modest gains in the standard of living of ordinary Sudanese, both north and south", he said, in a note for the record of the US Congress hearing.

The Sudanese government has said it will send a letter to US President George W. Bush to clarify its position after his call last Thursday, 20 June, on Khartoum to demonstrate more serious commitment to ending the Sudanese civil war.
Minister for External Relations Mustafa Uthman Isma'il said the government welcomed without reservations Bush's call for an end to the war, but was displeased that he had not touched on the need for the other warring party - the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) - to do the same.
Speaking at a public function in Washington DC, USA, Bush said there was no question that the Khartoum government had made "some useful contributions in cracking down on terror" since the 11 September events, but also that it "can and must do more".
[see Bush's remarks at: http://www.state.gov/p/af/] 
"Sudan's government must understand that ending its sponsorship of terror outside Sudan is no substitute for efforts to stop war inside Sudan," Bush stated.
"Sudan's government cannot continue to talk peace but make war, must not continue to block and manipulate UN food deliveries, and must not allow slavery to persist," the US president added. 
The SPLM/A stated on Monday that an Antonov bombing raid on Malual Kon, northern Bahr al-Ghazal, on Sunday morning (in which four people were allegedly killed and five more seriously injured) was intended to interrupt humanitarian assistance, and was "a blunt response" to Bush's statement. 
Isma'il called on the US to direct its call for an to end the Sudanese civil war to all parties involved, and not restrict it to the government alone, the Arabic language newspaper Al-Ra'y al-Amm reported in Khartoum on Monday. He also reiterated the Sudanese government's frequently stated commitment to reaching a comprehensive ceasefire agreement.
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter H Kansteiner testified at an American Congressional hearing on Sudan on 5 June that Washington was committed to pushing all the actors involved "to a serious, comprehensive and, hopefully, lasting peace process". [See: http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/10925.htm]
Al-Ra'y al-Amm on Monday quoted the Sudanese presidential adviser on political affairs, Dr Qutbi al-Mahdi, as saying that Bush's statement, which was "prejudiced and biased" against Khartoum, could be understood in terms of "the magnitude of pressure being exerted on the US administration" by rightist Christian groups because of Washington's involvement in peace issues in Sudan.
Al-Mahdi insisted that relief aid was going to the victims [of the civil war] and not the government, in contrast to what he called "the rebels' usurpation of relief food and imposition of taxes on affected war victims, for whom the aid was meant".
He also took issue with Bush's reference to slavery, saying that talk of slavery was "meaningless" since international groups had refuted its existence in Sudan, the report added.
A US-led eminent persons group on slavery, abduction and forced servitude in Sudan reported in late May that "abductions of civilians and forcible recruitment by the armed forces of all sides in the war is commonplace". [full story at
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28003]
Of particular concern, the panel said, was a pattern of abuses occurring in conjunction with attacks by pro-government militias known as murahilin on villages in areas controlled by the SPLM/A near the boundary between northern and southern Sudan.
The experts urged Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir to "take the lead in launching a campaign to make clear to all his government's firm opposition to these practices in all their forms".
Bush said on Thursday that his special envoy for peace in Sudan, John Danforth, had "made progress toward a ceasefire and improved delivery of humanitarian aid to such places as the Nuba Mountains region in Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan. 
The US would continue its search for peace in Sudan, seek to end Sudan's sponsorship of terror, and would "promote human rights and the foundations of a just peace within Sudan itself".
Washington wanted all sides to "work diligently" towards peace, delivering deeds rather than mere words, Kansteiner told the US Congressional hearing on Sudan on 5 June. In this regard, he said, the government in Khartoum would have much to prove, since "the US considers the onus of ending the civil war rests squarely on the shoulders of the government". 
The surest way Khartoum could now display its peaceful intentions would be to "fully collaborate with US and UN humanitarian initiatives by providing unrestricted international humanitarian access to civilians in need", Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told the same US Congressional hearing.

The recent development of a treatment for leishmaniasis, also known as black fever, a disease that each year afflicts some 500,000 people globally and kills at least 60,000, offers a ray of hope for thousands of Sudanese who die each year from the disease for lack of treatment.
The United Nations' World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement this week that scientists had developed a new treatment found to be at least 95 percent effective in patients who developed the more lethal "visceral" form of leishmaniasis. 
The disease is found in parts of 88 countries, but about 90 percent of all black fever cases occur in five countries - India, Brazil, Sudan, Nepal and Bangladesh. In the 1990s, Sudan suffered a crisis with 100,000 deaths among people at risk, according to the WHO.
The symptoms of visceral leishmaniasis include bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anaemia (occasionally serious). If left untreated, the fatality rate can be as high as 100 percent. 
Visceral leishmaniasis can cause large-scale epidemics with high case fatality. For example, western Upper Nile (also known as Unity, or Wahdah, State) in southern Sudan experienced a major outbreak between 1984 and 1994. This was the first epidemic in this area, and people were therefore very susceptible to the disease. 
Because of an accumulation of risk factors such as civil unrest, disruption of health systems, malnutrition, underlying diseases and due to absence of diagnostic facilities and first-line drugs at local level, the mortality rate was very high and 40,000 people were reported to have died of the disease.
WHO cited studies indicating that in some villages up to half the population succumbed to the disease, and said one report suggested that during this decade, visceral leishmaniasis claimed 100,000 lives in a population of around 300,000 in western Upper Nile. 
[See: http://www.who.int/emc/diseases/leish/index.html]
In Sudan, where the visceral form is known as kala-azar, leishmaniasis is most common in the conflict-affected Blue Nile, Upper Nile, Jonglei and Kassala regions, as well as in the area north of the capital, Khartoum. There are also indications that the disease is present in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan State, south-central Sudan, according to humanitarian sources. 
Increasing disease activity has also been noted in the eastern state of Al-Qadarif, notably along the Rahad and Dinder Rivers, while activity - formerly prevalent - has been decreasing in Sinnar and Sinjah, according to US-based Programme for Monitoring Emergency Diseases (ProMed).
The international medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres complained in February that systematic looting of the village of Nimne in oil-rich western Upper Nile had disrupted a kala-azar project with 107 patients under treatment and a basic health care unit with 1,700 to 2,000 consultations per month.
Over 40,000 fatal cases were reported from the western Upper Nile between 1984 and 1991, and the death toll among the Nuer and Dinka peoples in southern Sudan was estimated at 200,000 between 1988 and 1995, it added.
[http://www.fas.org/promed/] 
The new drug, Miltefosine, the first oral drug developed against leishmaniasis has already been approved for use in India, which has half the global burden of the disease, according to WHO, which was involved in the development of the treatment with the Indian government, the German biopharmaceutical company Zentaris, the Tropical Diseases Research, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.
"This is fantastic progress," WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland noted in the statement. "We now have a powerful new tool to fight this terrible disease. The combined efforts of these partners have opened a new era in the fight against visceral leishmaniasis. In doing so, we can free the poor from one of their many burdens."
Considered one of the world's most neglected diseases, leishmaniasis - a parasitic "wasting" disease, transmitted through the bite of a sand fly - afflicts some of the world's poorest people, with 80 percent of its victims earning less than US $2 a day.
Until now, all treatments for leishmaniasis had had substantial drawbacks, ranging from high cost to high toxicity, and even causing irreversible damage such as diabetes, the WHO stated this week.
The current treatment for one patient can cost as much as 250,000 Sudanese pounds (about  $97), about eight times the average monthly wages of a Sudanese government employee, according to ProMed.
The cost of current treatments (Pentostam, antimony, amphotericin B or pentamidine) is prohibitive for most Sudanese sufferers from leishmaniasis, and neither do the health authorities in Sudan have the capacity at present to launch a concerted campaign against the disease - which is not the highest priority given the depth and breadth of other humanitarian problems in the country, according to aid workers.
Leishmaniasis disease is often related to environmental changes such as deforestation, building of dams, new irrigation schemes, urbanisation and migration of non-immune people to endemic areas, according to the WHO.
http://www.who.int/emc/diseases/leish/leisdis1.html
The disease seriously hampers productivity and vitally needed socioeconomic progress, and the public health impact has been grossly underestimated for many years, mainly due to lack of awareness of its serious impact on health. The incidence of the disease is also severely underestimated, so that the actual health loss associated with it is greater than official figures suggest.

The government of Sudan has agreed to an extension of the local ceasefire agreement in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan from Thursday, and the rebel SPLM/A is set to follow suit, but there are still problems with its scope and implementation.
The National Congress government in Khartoum has committed itself to extending the ceasefire agreement for another six months, starting from Thursday 20 June, Republic of Sudan Radio reported on Monday.
And SPLM/A spokesman Samson Kwaje confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday evening that the rebel movement would also agree to an extension of the ceasefire, though he said he did not know the duration or other details because the full results of an SPLM/A-Nuba congress on the matter were still not known.
Additional details would be available on Thursday, when the current ceasefire agreement comes up for renewal, Kwaje added.
For the government's part, foreign ministry under secretary, Mutrif Siddiq Ali Numayri, said the agreement would continue along the lines of the accord reached in January between the government and the SPLM/A-Nuba region, Sudan Radio broadcast on Monday.
Numayri said the government had agreed to extend the agreement because of its importance to the peace and stability of the Nuba Mountains region, Southern Kordofan State, and as a means of promoting its development, the report added.
The government and SPLM/A-Nuba signed the renewable six-month Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement, covering an area of some 80,000 sq km, on 19 January this year, after six days of closed-door negotiations facilitated by the US and Swiss governments in Burgenstock, central Switzerland. 
The agreement has been implemented - and generally adhered to - under the supervision of a Joint Military Commission (JMC), comprising representatives of the government, the SPLM/A and of neutral third parties.
The Nuba ceasefire had, so far, brought "mixed results" for the civilian population of the SPLM/A-controlled areas of Nuba, and needed to translate into the achievement of minimum food aid targets to avert a looming food crisis in the region, humanitarian agencies warned in late May. 
On the positive side, they said, many Nuba people had welcomed remission from the threat of military attacks and aerial bombardment, and the unprecedented return of civilians from government-controlled areas.
However, bureaucratic issues and delays had contributed to a "growing erosion of confidence in the ceasefire arrangement", and it was essential to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access and to strengthen the mechanisms required for effective political pressure to be brought to bear on all actors, they added. 
Due to difficulties in delivering humanitarian assistance in the Nubas, particularly to SPLM/A-controlled areas, there was "growing evidence" to suggest that the vulnerability of the population had actually increased during the life of the ceasefire, partially due to the earlier than usual exhaustion of household food reserves brought on by the need to support returnees, according to NGOs organisations active in Sudan.
The government agreed in January to "unfettered humanitarian access to Nuba" but had continued to delay and deny flights into SPLM/A-controlled areas until mid-May - just weeks before the rainy season would make airstrips inaccessible there, Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told a US Congressional hearing on Sudan on 5 June. 
In addition, "the government had launched a massive dry-season offensive in the oilfields [including western Upper Nile]... aided by thousands of its forces redeployed as a result of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire," John Prendergast, co-director for Africa of the International Crisis Group told a US Congressional hearing on 5 June. 
The importance of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement was that it was "formal and detailed", and included the element of independent verification, which may offer "a small model to look at" for other areas of war-torn Sudan, according to humanitarian and diplomatic sources.
lso, flight clearance was being carried out by the JMC, and not the government, and people were enjoying a new freedom of movement, a start to economic revitalisation and "an overall feeling of optimism", according to Roger Winter. There was now some hope of using this successful initiative as a model for zones of tranquillity in which to assist vulnerable populations elsewhere in Sudan, he added.
Yet, John Prendergast argued at the same Congressional hearing that "well-meaning efforts to secure Days of Tranquillity and localised ceasefires was misplaced", when what was needed was "blanket access for humanitarian aid" and an end to the warring parties' veto over where relief agencies could provide people in need with assistance.
"We have legitimised the veto over and over again, most recently with the focus on the Days of Tranquillity," Prendergast complained, saying that Washington and the UN must re-focus on the fundamental objective of humanitarian diplomacy: the principle of unfettered access.

The government of Sudan has warned that it may pull of out peace talks with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) over the rebel group's seizure - in a lighting attack on Sunday 9 June - of the garrison town of Kapoeta in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan.
The presidential peace adviser, Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, said the government would complain to the US about the rebel attack, because it contravened a truce (signed in December and due to expire at the end of June) covering the areas between Kapoeta, Pibor and Boma, and intended to allow for cattle vaccinations.
The SPLM/A has celebrated the seizure of Kapoeta as a disaster for the government and a major victory for itself, saying that it killed some 200 soldiers and seized vehicles, arms and food supplies. Rebel sources have also spoken of following up on the victory by attempting to capture the strategic, government-held towns of Torit and Juba.
The SPLM/A lost control of Kapoeta to the government in 1991, but said it had no intention of relinquishing control again. "Of course, we are committed to peace talks, but this will not stop us from continuing military operations," an SPLA commander, Oyai Deng Ajak, told the BBC in Kapoeta. 
The Sudanese army had already pledged to reassemble its forces and retake Kapoeta, and there had  already been several Antonov bombing attacks on the town, the report added. 
Humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday of a shocking situation in Kapoeta, with bodies lying on the ground, and of a truck which hit an antitank mine, with an unknown number of casualties, in Kapoeta.
Foreign journalists were flown into Kapoeta, where they bore witness to the sight and smell of dead government soldiers lying in earthen trenches, with the SPLM/A in no hurry to bury them. 
Atabani said Khartoum would ask the US to demand an immediate halt to SPLM/A actions, and that the seizure of Kapoeta could affect future peace talks and other agreements, according to Reuters news agency. 
Peace talks are scheduled to open under the auspices of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday. 
During April, the US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, said both sides had offered proposals to IGAD suggesting "a rethinking of previously held positions", and had thereby shown it was possible to agree on contentious issues and to permit international monitoring of the implementation of their agreements.
Yet there is not much hope held out for significant progress at the current round of IGAD talks,  years of previous talks having produced little, especially as there were "no new ideas on the table" and no serious international pressure on the government or SPLM/A to negotiate seriously, according to regional analysts. 
The Sudanese government has demanded that the SPLM/A "forego all of the military advantage which it has gained because of the illegal attack", and stop any other attacks in that part of the country.
Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, said Kapoeta was in a "Zone of Tranquillity" under an agreement brokered by Danforth, in order to allow the eradication of rinderpest, a claim which the SPLM/A has denied.
Dirdiery told the BBC that the SPLA had taken "undue advantage" of the period of tranquillity to seize Kapoeta, and that the US response would determine the nature of Khartoum's participation in the IGAD talks set for Nairobi.
Danforth said in May that the usefulness of outside intervention would depend on the willingness of the parties to the conflict to live up to any commitments made, and that any participation by the US should be reviewed continually in light of this. "A breakdown in the implementation of the four test agreements would bring into question the parties' commitment to peace," he added.
Meanwhile, a ceasefire agreement in the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, has generally held, although it has effectively diverted government and rebel military forces to western Upper Nile and northern Bahr al-Ghazal, where fighting has intensified, according to media and humanitarian sources.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed concern over the continued humanitarian access denial to the oil-rich region of western Upper Nile in southern Sudan, where constant insecurity, resulting from ongoing fighting between the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and the Sudan government, has caused the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians. 
Laura Melo, WFP spokeswoman for the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes region, told IRIN on Wednesday that the issue of humanitarian access denials to specific areas of southern Sudan was not a new situation.
However, she added, the decision by the Sudanese government to deny relief agencies access to western Upper Nile (also known as Unity/Wahdah State) in the past three months was increasing the vulnerability of civilians, whose food supply from harvests garnered earlier in the year was already thinning out.
"For the past three months, Unity State has been one of the areas most affected by these flight denials. But because we have been denied access, we can't go there so we don't know what the situation there is like," Melo said.
"We have been attempting to solve the access problems to areas in the southern Sudan, with particular emphasis on western Upper Nile, because it is one of the most vulnerable areas in southern Sudan," she added. "They are now in the lean season and, as the year advances, their harvest will continue to run out."
During the month, WFP, which works with other relief agencies in southern Sudan under the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) consortium, distributed some 5,255 mt to some 875,000 beneficiaries, representing 51 percent of the total tonnage planned for the month of May in the southern sector. 
The agency stated that nearly 20 percent of the shortfall in planned deliveries in southern Sudan in May affected the Nuba Mountains, where WFP had delivered only a small amount of food while sorting its logistical system.
However, it cited insecurity and flight denials in western Upper Nile and Bieh State as the main reasons for the overall shortfall.
In addition to western Upper Nile/Unity State, humanitarian access has been denied to wide areas of Bahr al-Ghazal, Tambura (in Western Equatoria), Yei (in Bahr al-Jabal) and Upper Nile.
At the start of April, some 40 locations in southern Sudan were listed by the government of Sudan as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access "for security reasons", which effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into many parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to relief officials.
On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity State (encompassing western Upper Nile).
The Sudanese government has demanded the transportation of relief materials and humanitarian aid to affected areas from within Sudan and not from "centres abroad", on the basis of transparency, clarity and national sovereignty.
Karam al-Din Abd al-Mawla, the Sudanese Minister for International Cooperation, said on 29 May that the success and management of OLS relief operations to affected populations  depended on its positioning within Sudan, which would also provide cheaper land and river delivery alternatives to costly air transportation of relief materials.
A number of human rights groups have accused the Khartoum government of waging a depopulation war against civilians in western Upper Nile region, as part of a wider plan to gain control of oil-rich areas.
According to a report by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan, released in May, an estimated 50,000 civilians have been forced to flee recent military operations.
"Civilians continue to be forcibly displaced, villages burned to the ground, and helicopter gunships still kill women and children in the south," the report charged.
"The resulting vast empty regions support the allegation that the government is knowingly and deliberately depopulating this oil-rich area in order to make it secure for oil business," according to the report, entitled "Depopulating Sudan's Oil Region".
Khartoum denies targeting civilian populations in oil areas, and has blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.
Responding to the accusations, Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi told IRIN on Wednesday that it was becoming increasingly difficult to "regulate the war", in the light of mounting accusations which both sides have traded regarding violation of agreements in a number of regions declared tranquillity zones.
"These accusations are not new," he said. "This only indicates that it is very difficult to regulate war. The antidote to all these problems really is a comprehensive ceasefire."
The government of Sudan has consistently called for a comprehensive ceasefire in order to create conditions conducive to peace, while the SPLM/A argues that such a ceasefire is only possible within the context of a political settlement that delivers a just and sustainable peace.
"We appeal to the international community to redouble efforts for a comprehensive ceasefire," Dirdiery added.

At least 1.8 million Africans fled their homes due to conflict during 2001, the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) has said in its latest global report on refugees and displaced people.
'The World Refugee Survey 2002', which was released on Thursday, said those who fled in 2001 brought to at least 13.9 million the number of Africans who "remained uprooted at the start of 2002 as a result of long-term violence and repression." Sudan, it added, was the largest source of uprooted people, with 4.4 million of its people displaced. 
The USCR estimated that some 1.1 million people fled Liberia and Sierra Leone. Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, and Somalia also provided large numbers of displaced people.
DRC, Kenya and Sudan also figured among the five African countries hosting the largest numbers of refugees. The other two are Tanzania and Zambia.
The Washington D.C-based organisation deplored the fact that peace efforts in numerous countries had not brought genuine peace. Other obstacles, including insufficient funding from the international community, hampered the work of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other aid agencies.
The situation will remain "unchanged for the foreseeable future unless peace negotiations and post-conflict humanitarian assistance prove to be genuine efforts, rather than half-hearted gestures," the USCR said.
The 2000 report contains reports on refugee situations in 38 African countries and reviews 133 countries worldwide. The USCR is a nonprofit humanitarian organisation that works for the protection and assistance of refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons around the world.
[For more information about USCR and its report, please visit http://www.refugees.org ]

Nairobi, 10 June 2002 (IRIN) - The Sudanese presidential peace adviser, Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, has criticised certain US groups' "enmity" towards the government of Sudan in the wake of the US Congressional hearing on the country on 5 June. 
Salah al-Din said in a press statement that certain groups hostile to the Sudanese government wanted to confuse American policy towards the country, and these would weaken any progress achieved by the US peace envoy, John Danforth, the official Sudan News Agency (Suna) reported on Sunday.
The special Congressional hearing, was another effort to help advance the quest for peace in Sudan, according to Henry J. Hyde, chairman of the US Committee on International Relations.
Khartoum had officially asked to participate in the hearing in order to explain its point of view and "reflect facts", according the Sudanese ambassador to the US, Khidr Harun Ahmad, as cited by Suna on Saturday.
The request was rejected on the basis that governments were not usually invited to participate in these sittings, according to Khidr Harun, who said he had hoped to moderate the "flagrant hostility" of most of the participants, and guarantee balance in the session. 
Some of the institutions of the US administration were confused or dishonest, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had called for "confiscation [erosion] of the sovereignty of the Sudan government", Suna quoted Salah al-Din as saying. The demands included in the USAID testimony to Congress would be rejected by Khartoum, he added.
Roger Winter, USAID assistant administrator, testified at the hearing that Khartoum was erecting bureaucratic and operational barriers to the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Sudan, in a manner "so consistent as to amount to a deliberate strategy".
There was credible evidence that the frequency of attacks on civilians was increasing, and Khartoum had restricted access to western Upper Nile, where veteran aid workers had described the condition of 150,000 to 300,000 internally displaced people as "the worst they have ever seen", he said.
USAID hoped to make use of Washington's political leverage to support the UN in its efforts "to negotiate cross-line access and eliminate government of Sudan access denials", Winter said.
The agency was also exploring ways to revisit the current flight clearance system in order to "move beyond the government's unilateral ability to veto humanitarian flights", often for political reasons, he added. 
There have been positive achievements (like a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains, and progress on the issues of slavery and abductions), but Khartoum still seems to be of two minds, "poised on the edge between a peace and war mentality", according to Winter.
Salah al-Din also criticised proponents of the draft Sudan Peace Act in the US, under which Washington would impose restrictions on oil companies operating in Sudan.
Numerous speakers suggested at the Congressional hearing that the US should move forward with this act (currently languishing in legislative limbo) in order to provide leverage on oil companies involved in Sudan, and thus on the Sudanese government, to engage meaningfully in a peace process.
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter H. Kansteiner said the White House was opposed to sections of the proposed legislation which would sanction access oil companies active in Sudan, because it would be "a precedent for political interference in US capital markets".
American companies are already barred from investing in Sudan, which remains on Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism. 
Khidr Harun said at the weekend that it was pressure groups intent on distorting the image of Sudan that were pushing for the Sudan Peace Act. Sanctions against international firms engaged in oil production in Sudan would "eliminate even the modest gains in the standard of living of ordinary Sudanese, both north and south", he said, in a note for the record of the US Congress hearing.
Khartoum, he said, was prepared to "adhere to the principles of sharing of power and wealth among all the peoples of Sudan", but bold action by the government of Sudan must be matched by bold action from the US to see through to the end its current peace initiative.

US hearing links peace efforts, humanitarian access

Nairobi, 7 June 2002 (IRIN) - Despite the misery being caused by the Sudanese civil war - Africa's longest-running and bloodiest - very little is being done to end the suffering of the helpless and innocent, Henry J. Hyde, chairman of the US Committee on International Relations, told a special Congressional hearing on Sudan on Wednesday.

"Somewhere in that land of misery today, a child will die, a mother will lose a limb and young women will be enslaved," he stated, saying Wednesday's hearing was another effort, one of many in the past decade, to help push the quest for peace in Sudan. 

"Unfortunately, a new generation of southern Sudanese are growing up in the midst of war and hopelessness," Hyde said, adding that the Sudanese government, which came to power by ousting a democratically elected government in 1989, "continues to mount a brutal military campaign against its powerless masses in the south".

He expressed regret that the US Senate had so far failed to appoint conferees in order to reconcile different versions of the Sudan Peace Act, which the US House of Representatives passed in June 2001 "in an effort to address some of the problems facing Sudan, to provide assistance to those fighting for democracy and freedom, and to punish those who trade in 'blood oil'". 

The US special peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, recently concluded that "this is the time for a major push for a compromise settlement", and that was, indeed, the case, according to numerous speakers at Wednesday's hearing, including Sudanese born Francis Deng, a senior academic at the US-based Brookings Institution, Massachusetts, USA.

Danforth's "pragmatic approach and incremental achievements on humanitarian issues" had generated a momentum for peace within and outside Sudan, he said, but the situation now required more assertive US leadership to end the war. 
"What is most needed now is a policy on Sudan - one in which the US is a central player, "Michael K. Young, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, said.
Bringing into force the House of Representatives-approved version of the Sudan Peace Act (now languishing in limbo, reportedly at the behest of the US administration) was a crucial first step in such a policy, in order to provide leverage on oil companies involved in Sudan, and thus on the Sudanese government, he added.
That point was echoed by Eric Reeves, a vocal opponent of the Khartoum government, who said it would be unwise to see the confidence-building measures proposed by Danforth as a clear and decisive policy response, when what was needed was to hold the Sudanese government to "a clear timetable and set of benchmarks in a fully credible and unified peace process".
Too often the Danforth report had "put the cart before the horse", with the peace envoy "unwilling to see that many important issues [including humanitarian access, the safety of civilians and an end to slavery and abductions] simply cannot be resolved without first securing a just peace", Reeves added. 
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter H. Kansteiner testified that the Sudanese conflict had gone on too long, and that Washington was committed to pushing all the actors involved "to a serious, comprehensive and, hopefully, lasting peace process".
US strategic interests in Sudan involved denying it as a base of operations for international terrorism, working on a just and lasting peace, and pushing for unhindered humanitarian access, improved human rights and religious freedom, he said.
"We must now work diligently to demand deeds rather than mere words and, in this regard, the government in Khartoum will have much to prove," Kansteiner said. "The US considers the onus of ending the civil war rests squarely on the shoulders of the government."
He also emphasised the "inextricable link" between the search for peace in Sudan and gains in humanitarian access and human rights.
This was also a theme addressed by Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who said the government of Sudan was erecting too many bureaucratic and operational barriers to the delivery of assistance to vulnerable populations, in a manner "so consistent as to amount to a deliberate strategy".
"The GoS [government of Sudan] continually obstructs the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the implementation of [rehabilitation and development] programmes in opposition areas. It delays operations, violates agreements, and denies access to humanitarian flights," he said.
In addition, the frequency of attacks on civilians was increasing, with credible reports from western Upper Nile [also known as Unity, or Wahdah, State] that the government military campaign was "directly targeting civilians and food stocks through intensified, high-altitude bombings and helicopter gunship attacks," Winter testified.
The government had restricted access to western Upper Nile, where an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 civilians have been displaced from their homes, and veteran aid workers have described the state of internally displaced people as "the worst they have ever seen," he said.
"Khartoum seems to be of two minds, poised on the edge between a peace and a war mentality," according to Winter.
The surest way it could now display its peaceful intentions to the US, which had committed itself to being a catalyst for peace, would be to "fully collaborate with US and UN humanitarian initiatives by providing unrestricted international humanitarian access to civilians in need", he added.
 

A joint meeting of donors to Sudan and aid agencies operating under the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) umbrella has come out with "a clear and unambiguous message" to all parties in Sudan to ensure "unimpeded humanitarian access to all populations in need".
The principle of "unimpeded access to those in need" must be pursued vigorously and persistently by donors, the United Nations and NGOs, it concluded.
In particular, these organisations should push for increased access to key locations in war-torn western Upper Nile (also known as Unity/Wahdah State) and to Eastern Equatoria, before the imminent arrival of the rainy season, which will hamper aid interventions, according to participants. 
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in a humanitarian update covering the first five months of 2002, expressed deep concern about the fate of women and children caught up in the fighting, which continues to displace people from their homes in western Upper Nile. Humanitarian actors working in Sudan estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced in western Upper Nile alone between January and April.
The joint donors' meeting, held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday and Tuesday took place as the government of Sudan issued a schedule of clearances for humanitarian access flights for June that had caused "considerable concern", according to aid workers. 
Not only was access denied to some locations but others were put "under advisory", meaning held in abeyance, either because of a possible security risk to humanitarian personnel or because the place names were allegedly not known, they said.
Another requirement which had caused some alarm was that all humanitarian access to western Upper Nile/Unity, must be through government-controlled areas, primarily through the Northern Kordofan town of El Obeid (Al-Ubayyid). 
At the start of April, some 40 locations in southern Sudan were listed by the government of Sudan as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access "for security reasons", which effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into many parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to relief officials. 
On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity/western Upper Nile.
The government last week agreed to a resumption of aid flows into the highly contested area of western Upper Nile, but on the condition that relief flights passed through the north. Khartoum said aid agencies would be permitted to fly relief to the oil-rich region for the first time in over two months, but on condition that the aid originated in government territory in northern Sudan, principally from El Obeid, humanitarian sources said.
UN sources told IRIN that government representatives had insisted that access to western Upper Nile/Unity would only be allowed through government-controlled territory in the north, for security reasons. However, no official agreement had been signed, and no written proposals had been put forward by the government negotiators, they added. 
Minister for International Cooperation, Karam al-Din Abd al-Mawla, last week outlined "basic and necessary principles" for the management of the OLS programme to assist vulnerable people in Sudan, including administration of the programme and delivery of assistance from inside the country, the official Sudan News Agency (Suna) reported on 30 May.
He said the transportation and delivery of relief should be undertaken from inside Sudan in the interest of transparency and clarity, besides the importance of "safeguarding the national sovereignty of the state", Suna reported.
Khartoum also pointed to the high cost of air transportation of relief supplies from outside the country, and suggested that transportation from inside by land and river would be more efficient, it said. Overall administration of humanitarian programmes should be from one office in Khartoum, with support activities from a branch office in Lokichoggio, northern Kenya, only when necessary, it quoted Abd al-Mawla as saying. 
Major changes in operating procedures should properly be made only as a result of discussions and negotiations involving all the parties to the tripartite agreement on humanitarian operations in Sudan: the government, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the OLS consortium, humanitarian sources informed IRIN on Wednesday. 
The three parties signed, in December 1999, Agreement on the Implementation of Principles Governing the Protection and Provision of Humanitarian Assistance to War-Affected Civilian Populations, which included a measure stating that war-affected civilian populations had the right to receive humanitarian assistance. 
The joint donors' meeting noted "an increasing number of instances" where access and humanitarian principles were being subverted by administrative procedures, and the impression was sometimes given that the intention was to add restrictions, create ambiguity and "deny people in need", according to informed sources.
It was decided at the joint donors' meeting to press for access to seven persistently denied locations in Eastern Equatoria, that a number of locations under government "advisory" should be assessed by OLS security to see if conditions allowed access, and that all OLS airstrips should be identified clearly on a map made available to the government and SPLM/A to avoid any possible confusion about locations.
As for western Upper Nile, where reports suggest a serious humanitarian crisis is in the making, the Nairobi meeting said locations in SPLM-controlled areas should continue to be accessed through the OLS base at Lokichoggio in northwestern Kenya - and not through El Obeid.
In addition, it strongly suggested that access to key locations should be maintained for long enough to allow "meaningful interventions", and not just hit-and-run activities, according to humanitarian sources.

Awut Deng Acuil, a peace worker in southern Sudan, has been declared a winner of the InterAction 2002 Humanitarian Award, in honour of her "extraordinary leadership" in promoting peace and development in the war-torn country.
InterAction, the American Council for Voluntary Action, is an umbrella organisation for international NGOs which have offices in the United States. 
Deng has been a longtime conflict resolution trainer with the New Sudan Council of Churches, and is a founding member of the Sudanese Women's Association of Nairobi and the Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace.
"Awut is an inspiration to us all," said Ken Hackett, executive director of the US-based Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an InterAction member organisation which has worked closely with Deng. 
"She is a person who has dedicated her life to bringing peace and reconciliation to this troubled region."
Deng, born and raised in southern Sudan, has been instrumental in people-to-people peace processes in the Bahr al-Ghazal and western Upper Nile regions, the momentum of which continues to grow slowly but steadily, according to humanitarian workers.
These processes have built on the success of the West Bank Dinka-Nuer Conference in Wunlit in March 1999 - endorsed by delegates, church leaders and the leadership of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) - which has since been followed by numerous other people-to-people agreements on the west and east banks of the Nile, involving members of the Anyuak, Dinka (Bor and Padang), Jie, Kachipo, Murle (Boma) and Nuer (Gawaar and Lou) ethnic groups.
While traditional hostilities have prevailed for generations among some of these ethnic groups, they have been aggravated, and often manipulated, by the warring parties in the course of the 19-year-old civil war, according to aid workers in Sudan.
People-to-people peace processes and conferences serve as a forum for people to face each other, discuss their differences and search for agreements to reconcile and make peace. Practical agreements are also hammered out over issues such as access to animal grazing areas, water points and the return of abducted children and women.
Such local peace agreements have also emphasised that all military and militia groups should respect the civilian population, allow displaced people and abducted women and children to return to their homes, and allow for freedom of movement, trade and communication across tribal areas. 
Deng's particular ability to bridge the divides that split local communities "gives courage and hope to others that most problems can be resolved through sensitive dialogue and understanding", Hackett added.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned that a significant shortfall in funding for this year is "seriously hindering" its ability to undertake planned, regular humanitarian activities, as well as its capacity for emergency response.
The annual appeal for US $24.6 million for emergency programme interventions in the southern sector of Sudan was only 37 percent funded as of the end of April, and the $15.4 million shortage would have a negative impact on nutrition, primary health care, education and human rights promotion activities, the agency reported in a recent donor update.
For the northern sector, UNICEF requested $27.6 million (including an amended appeal for the Nuba Mountains region, Abyei and Raga) for emergency interventions in government-controlled areas, and had received $2.4 million by end of April, leaving a funding gap of $25.3 million.
The funding situation was "pretty chronic" and typified the situation for many aid agencies involved in Sudan, including NGOs, a UNICEF spokesman, Martin Dawes, told IRIN on Wednesday.
The agency would continue certain activities, such as immunisation, which was vital in southern Sudan, but others, including protection interventions for women and children, would be "seriously degraded", he said.
People had been saying that a serious crisis was emerging in western Upper Nile - possibly along the lines of the 1998 conflict-related famine in Bahr al-Ghazal - and, if that happened, "there could be big trouble, because agencies' capacity to respond is seriously eroded," Dawes added. 
In the southern sector, funding targets for family shelter and relief (for internally displaced (persons - IDPs - and other affected populations), mine-awareness activities, grass-root-level peace-building and, especially, eradication of the abduction of women and children were less than 20 percent funded - the last-named attracting no funding at all, according to the donor update. 
Nutrition activities, emergency basic education, demobilisation of child soldiers and protection of IDPs had also attracted less than 30 percent of the target, while water and sanitation activities had already been fully funded for the year, it added.
"Procurement of certain supplies has been hindered or stopped, and programmes are evaluating key staffing positions in order to downsize if necessary," UNICEF said.
It said it had not been able to procure a planned 2,500 primary health kits, which could limit emergency response capacity, and that it would be difficult or even impossible to purchase vaccines for outbreak response, if needed. "The potential impact in loss of human life, primarily, children," the agency warned.
With indicators from the field in southern Sudan indicating serious nutritional needs, UNICEF would not be able to respond without addition funding, it said, adding that the landmine awareness programme would be stopped entirely if funds did not arrive. 
In the northern sector, no target intervention had yet achieved 30 percent funding, while action against HIV/AIDS, mine awareness, community-led peace-building in Abyei, and basic services for people in Raga (which had many conflict-displaced people in 2001) had received no funding at all. Neither had action to abolish the practice of female genital mutilation, sometimes known as female circumcision, received any funding contribution for 2002.
In its donor update, UNICEF expressed concern over the situation of IDPs in war-torn western Upper Nile and the threat of families being uprooted by clashes between the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Equatoria, southern Sudan.
"Fighting between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation [Movement/] Army [SPLM/A] continues to displace people from their homes in western Upper Nile," it said. Humanitarian actors working in Sudan estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced by fighting in western Upper Nile alone between January and April this year. 
UNICEF also noted that "a disturbing change" in the government's approval of humanitarian access flights in May had designated certain areas in southern Sudan "not recommended" for humanitarian operations.
In April and May, the Sudanese government imposed increased restrictions on both flight access and general humanitarian access "for security reasons", which effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into many parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to relief officials. 
On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity/Wahdah State (encompassing western Upper Nile).
In addition, with Sudan having granted permission to the UPDF to pursue the LRA within Sudan, clashes between these forces in Eastern Equatoria "threaten to displace families and deprive them of access to basic services such as health care, clean water and basic education", according to UNICEF. 
Though polio eradication efforts have met with some success, and the local ceasefire arrangement in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, has improved the environment for health and nutrition interventions there, progress on key humanitarian objectives remains unsatisfactory, according to the agency. 
"The humanitarian operation in Sudan continues in the context of the 19-year-old civil war, primarily over resources, between the government and the SPLM/A and other 'second-tier' parties to the conflict", and the impact of this on women and children continues to be "extremely negative", UNICEF added.

The Sudanese army and Popular Defence Forces (PDF) militias have claimed recent military victories in Bahr al-Ghazal State, southern Sudan, and in Blue Nile State, in the east of the country, during recent engagements.
The Sudanese army reported that it had destroyed rebel camps in Sabun, on the Raga-Aweil road, and Miri, both in western Bahr al-Ghazal, according to the Republic of Sudan Radio in Omdurman, outside the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
The army had also claimed military victories in Magok and Maryam, near Aweil in Bahr al-Ghazal, and to have taken control of Makway town, between Wau and Gogrial, the report added.
The army spokesman, Gen Muhammad al-Bashir Sulayman, had claimed that the Sudanese army and militia forces had inflicted "huge losses" on the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), in terms of casualties, equipment and fighting supply materials, the Associated Press agency (AP) reported on Sunday.
Sulayman had claimed that the gains had reinforced government control over oil areas, including Adar-Yill, the second-largest oil drilling site in Sudan, and improved supply lines, the report added. 
An SPLM/A spokesman, Samson Kwaje, rejected the government claims, saying that a government "campaign to capture Gogrial", north of Wau, on the Bahr al-Ghazal river, had failed.
The army also claimed, in a statement, to have ousted rebel forces from "limited locations" they had controlled in Upper Nile, thereby facilitating access to oil-extraction locations, according to Sudanese media.
AFP news agency quoted another SPLM/A spokesman, George Garang, as saying that the government reports were mere propaganda, with the government "trying to raise the morale of their forces, who have been badly beaten" in Blue Nile and western Upper Nile.
Garang said the SPLM/A controlled all areas south of Bentiu, near the location of the oilfields in western Upper Nile, and that fighters in the field had said they intended to advance on the government garrison town of Wau. 
Despite the contradictory accounts of the fighting, they do confirm consistent reports of heavy military engagement in both western Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile. Aid agency staff have reported heavy clashes, civilian displacement and increased activity in both areas by government helicopter gunships.
Recent months have seen an upsurge in fighting in Unity State/western Upper Nile between Sudanese government and aligned militia forces, on the one hand, and the SPLM/A, on the other, essentially over control of the area's rich oil resources, according to humanitarian agencies.
The United Nations Children's Fund has, in a humanitarian update to end May, just released, expressed deep concern about the fate of women and children caught up in fighting, which continues to displace people from their homes in western Upper Nile. 
Humanitarian actors working in Sudan estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced in western Upper Nile alone between January and April this year.
At the start of April, some 40 locations in southern Sudan were listed by the government of Sudan as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access "for security reasons", which effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into many parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to relief officials. 
On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity State (encompassing western Upper Nile).
Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian principle – is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of Operation Lifeline Sudan, which established principles for the protection and provision of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.
Despite attempts by government forces to increase their control over the oil-rich areas, often using new military technology paid for with oil revenues, rebel forces had continued to restrict government oil extraction to the area north of Bentiu town, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group told IRIN last week.
The SPLM/A had consolidated its control over western Upper Nile south of Bentiu, where the bulk of Sudan's oil resources were located, having gained significant military support following a merger with the formerly government-aligned Sudan People's Defence Forces of the Nuer leader, Riek Machar, Prendergast said.
Villages in western Upper Nile under government control, as well as those held by the rebels, have been placed on the government's "denied locations" list, according to Prendergast.
Despite repeated calls for unrestricted access, and agreements by the warring parties to assure this, military operations, insecurity, flight bans and the government's alleged depopulation of oil-rich areas to secure them for production have displaced and/or precluded access to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Khartoum denies it is targeting civilian populations in oil areas, and has blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.
In a separate development in eastern Sudan, the Sudanese armed forces have been celebrating their recapture from rebel forces last week of Qaysan town in Blue Nile State, 600 km southeast of Khartoum. They also claimed to have forced rebel troops from two locations near Qaysan, AP reported.
The SPLM/A claims to have made a "tactical withdrawal from Qaysan, near Sudan's eastern border with Ethiopia.

The US Committee on International Relations at the US House of Representatives is to hold an important oversight hearing on US-Sudan policy on Wednesday 5 June, in the wake of developments in the Sudanese peace process.
Senior US officials, independent experts and academics will make statements during the hearing, called by the chairman of the Committee, Henry J. Hyde, to help define steps towards peace in Sudan after the report to President George W Bush last month of the special US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth.
In his report, Danforth recommended that the US continue to serve as an intermediary between the warring parties in Sudan, that its participation must be "collaborative and catalytic", as well as "energetic and effective", and that the enforcement of any agreements concluded was essential for peace.
Danforth said the war between north and south was not winnable by either side in terms of achieving their present objectives, and that both the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) had shown that it was possible to agree on contentious issues and to permit international monitoring of the implementation of their agreements.
A fair allocation of oil resources could be the key to working out broader political issues, Danforth said, adding that while the agreed principle of self-determination (for the south) included the option of secession, a more "feasible" and "preferable" view would simply ensure the right of southerners to live under a government that respected their religion and culture.
The Committee will hear of progress on Danforth's four confidence-building tests for the government of Sudan and the SPLM/A, as key parties to the Sudanese conflict: a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan to allow much-needed humanitarian assistance; the creation of zones and times of tranquillity in other areas for the delivery of relief; an end to the targeting of civilians; and, an end to the practices of slavery and forced abduction.
The US has emphasised that the warring parties "must be prepared to comply fully and completely with all agreements reached", and that they be held responsible for progress on these issues. 
Among the questions to be raised in the hearing will be how the US can negotiate effectively or achieve additional leverage with the government of Sudan; the extent to which the warring parties are committed to peace efforts; and, how the US can limit the use of food as weapon of war in Sudan, according to a Committee statement on Monday.
The Committee would also consider how Danforth's proposal for the sharing of Sudan's oil revenues could "help to stop the war and end the destruction of communities living near oil fields", it said.
Participants will also consider why Khartoum has restricted humanitarian relief efforts in southern Sudan; how oil revenues might go towards the delivery of aid in areas outside the UN-led Operation Lifeline Sudan initiative; what strategies could preclude the use of oil revenues from escalating the war; how could awareness of the practice of slavery be spread; and how a secular Sudanese state might ensure freedom of religion for all.
The American officials scheduled to speak at Wednesday's oversight hearing include: Walter Kansteiner, Assistant Secretary at the US State Department's Bureau of African Affairs; Roger P. Winter, Assistant Administrator at the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance within the US Agency for International Development; and Michael Young, Chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Other participants will include Francis Deng, a senior academic at the US-based Brookings Institution, Massachusetts, USA; John Prendergast, Co-Director of the International Crisis Group's Africa Programme; Ken Isaac of the Christian NGO Samaritan's Purse; and Eric Reeves, a vocal opponent of the Khartoum government on human rights and humanitarian issues, based at Smith College, Massachusetts.

The Sudanese government on Wednesday agreed to a resumption of aid flows into the highly contested area of western Upper Nile, southern Sudan, but on the condition that relief flights pass through the north, according to humanitarian sources and Sudanese media reports.
Khartoum said aid agencies would be permitted to fly relief to the oil-rich region for the first time in over two months, but on condition that the aid originated in government territory in north Sudan, principally from the town of El Obeid (Al-Ubayyid), Northern Kordofan, humanitarian officials told IRIN.
UN sources said government representatives had demanded that access to western Upper Nile (also known as Wahdah, or Unity State) would only be allowed through government-controlled territory in the north for security reasons. However, no official agreement had been signed, and no written proposals had been put forward by the government negotiators, they added. 
Aid agencies, many operating under the UN-led humanitarian operation Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) have, for years, flown relief supplies directly into southern Sudan from the town of Lokichoggio, northwestern Kenya.
OLS, the umbrella operation for UN agencies and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) operating in Sudan, submits a routine request at the start of each month to the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) for humanitarian flight access to a number of locations in southern Sudan.
On average, Sudanese government authorities deny OLS access to 25 locations in southern Sudan each month, or about 10 percent of the requests, according to the UN.
At the start of April, however, some 40 locations, were listed as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access, according to relief officials. This effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to a statement issued by the UN Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA).
On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity State (encompassing western Upper Nile), according to a recent statement from nine major aid agencies.
Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian principle – is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of OLS, which established principles for the protection and provision of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.
During negotiations with senior UN officials over humanitarian access on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sudanese First Vice-President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha had said the government would terminate all OLS operations out of Lokichoggio, the Sudanese News Agency (Suna) reported.
"The deal struck may, or may not, buy a limited amount of time for food delivery into western Upper Nile by avoiding a political confrontation with Khartoum," humanitarian sources told IRIN.
After a press conference in Khartoum on Wednesday, Suna quoted Sudanese Minister for International Cooperation, Karam al-Din Abd al-Mawla, as saying that relief materials would be transported into 43 areas in Wahdah/Unity State from the airport at El Obeid. The new arrangement would be reviewed after an initial one month period, he added.
It seemed highly unlikely the SPLM/A would degree to the terms of the deal, which, according to humanitarian sources, "compromises the basic terms of the OLS agreement" signed by the Sudanese government, the SPLM/A and the UN.
Recent months have seen an upsurge in fighting in Unity State/western Upper Nile between Sudanese government and aligned militia forces, on the one hand, and the rebel SPLM/A, on the other, essentially over control of the area's rich oil resources. 
Despite attempts by government forces to increase their control over the oil rich areas, often using new military technology paid for with oil revenues, rebel forces had held their ground and continued to restrict government oil extraction to the area north of the town of Bentiu, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group (ICG) told IRIN on Thursday.
The SPLM/A had consolidated its control over western Upper Nile south of Bentiu, where the bulk of Sudan's oil resources were located, having gained significant military support following a merger with the formerly government-aligned Sudan People's Defence Forces of the Nuer leader, Riek Machar, Prendergast said.
Local people in the area had been "re-energised" by the merger, which had ended over a decade of enmity between the two rebel groups, he added.
Villages in western Upper Nile under government control, as well as those held by the rebels, had been placed on the denied locations list, according to Prendergast. This was possibly to hide the large number of casualties the government had suffered and also to prevent aid agencies from witnessing the resupply of government forces in Bentiu, the main government-held town in the area, he said.
Despite repeated calls for unrestricted access, and agreements by the warring parties to assure this, military operations, insecurity, flight bans and the government's alleged depopulation of oil-rich areas to secure them for production have displaced and/or precluded access to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
An estimated 80,000 people had been displaced from Ruweng County and another 50,000 from Unity State/western Upper Nile in a pattern of depopulation of oil areas by government forces and aligned militias, the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan reported earlier this month. 
However, Khartoum denies it is targeting civilian populations in oil areas, and has blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.
Senior UN officials on 25 April called on all parties to the conflict in Sudan to lift all bans on humanitarian aid flights, and to grant full access to people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
"We are appealing to both sides to give us access so we can get food and non-food items to people who need it," said Ambassador Tom Vraalsen, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan.

The governments of the Central African Republic (CAR) and neighbouring Sudan have agreed to establish a commission of inquiry into the killing on 18 May of about 100 Sudanese cattle herders in the region of Gordil and Birao in the northern savannah of Vakaga Province of the CAR.
A joint communiqué issued on 28 May stated that the commission would undertake a mission to determine the cause of the conflict; the exact number of people killed, and to bring to justice those responsible. It would also attempt to retrieve herds of cattle that had fled during the hostilities. The statement noted the excellent relations between the two countries and commended their border authorities for quickly restoring calm among the population.
The communiqué follows high-level meetings held on Monday and Tuesday in the CAR capital, Bangui, during which a Sudanese delegation of regional governors and tribal chiefs led by President Umar Hasan al-Bashir's adviser on security and minister of internal affairs, Maj-Gen Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn, and the secretary of state in the Ministry of External Relations, Fudayl al-Tijani, met CAR government officials. Sudanile website in Khartoum reported that the Bani Halbah, Ta'ishah and Al-Falatah Al-Wisdaniyyah ethnic groups spent eight months per year in CAR. They have longstanding ties and intermarriage with a number of ethnic groups in CAR.
A similar meeting to improve border security was held earlier in May between a CAR government delegation and representatives of the Chadian government in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena.
Hostilities in the region have been attributed to longstanding conflict between agriculturalists and pastoralists, aggravated by an influx of arms. In some cases entire villages have been burned.

An international commission investigating alleged slavery practices in Sudan has said the abduction of civilians by both government and rebel forces was "commonplace", and called for President Umar Hasan al-Bashir to lead a campaign against the practice.
The group found that "abductions of civilians and forcible recruitment by the armed forces of all sides in the war was commonplace," the report by the US-led eminent persons group on slavery, abduction and forced servitude in Sudan.
The group urged the Sudanese president to "take the lead in launching a campaign to make clear to all his government's firm opposition to these practices in all their forms", the report, released on 22 May, said.
This should include immediate release of all such victims, an announcement of the government's intent to persecute persons who commit such abuses and the enactment of new criminal legislation, it added. 
Of particular concern was a pattern of abuses occurring in conjunction with attacks by pro-government militias known as murahilin on villages in SPLA-controlled areas near the boundary between northern and southern Sudan, the expert panel said.
These abuses were characterised by: capture through abduction; forced transfer of victims to another community; subjection to forced labour for no pay; denial of victims' freedom of movement and choice: and often, assaults of personal identity such as renaming, forced religious conversion, and the prohibition on the use of native languages, their report stated.
Through the mediation of US special envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A in December 2001, agreed to facilitate the visit of a US-led and internationally-supported mission to investigate means for preventing abductions, slavery and forced servitude.
The government of Sudan and its predecessors had been responsible for arming murahilin groups (including members of the Baggara, Masariyyah, Rizaiqat and Zaghawah tribes), using them as auxiliary armed forces and allowing members of such forces to enjoy impunity for abductions and other serious crimes. Militias drawn from the Rizaiqat and Misseiriya Humr Baggara of South Darfur and West Kordofan had been most involved, the report said.
However, both government and rebel parties, to one degree or another, had engaged in abuses in connection with Sudan's 19-year civil war, it added.
Intentional attacks on civilians, abductions, forcible recruitment of children and other civilians as soldiers and forced labourers, hostage taking, rape, looting, destruction of food supplies, and the denial of access to humanitarian assistance had all occurred.
"All these are prohibited by international covenants and conventions," the report stated.
The group criticised both the government and the SPLM/A for obstructing efforts by independent organisations to investigate the problem of contemporary slavery. Partly as a result, the Commission had not been able to establish the number of persons who had been abducted and/or enslaved, there being "vast divergences among available estimates," it said.
The government in Khartoum has repeatedly denied that slavery exists in Sudan, while admitting that there is a problem of some tribal militias abducting civilians. 
In a letter dated 15 April, to the head of the Commission, Penn Kemble, Sudanese Presidential Adviser on Peace Affairs Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani called abduction a "serious and hideous practice" that had been exacerbated by the ongoing war. 
Atabani said the phenomenon of women and children being abducted by raiders was "an ancient practice... sometimes used as a kind of exchange, where one tribe exacts punishment on the other for some wrongdoing."
"There is no proven benefit in applying a generic term like slavery to this practice," Atabani said.
The experts group concluded that in a significant number of cases, abduction was the first stage in a pattern of abuse that fell under the definition of slavery in both the International Slavery Convention of 1926 and the Supplementary Convention of 1956, both ratified by Sudan. 
Under Article 20 of the Sudan constitution of 1998, "Every human being shall have the right to life... and he is free of subjection to slavery, forced labour, humiliation or torture," according to the report.
The Sudan Penal Code also makes illegal the acts of abduction, forced labour, unlawful confinement, and unlawful detention, it said. Slavery was officially abolished in Sudan in 1924. 
Although use of the term abduction instead of slavery was controversial, it had allowed international agencies to engage the government in discussions about how to address the problem.
Use of 'abduction' rather than 'slavery' had also helped lead to the creation of the government's Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWAC) in May 1999, which has been charged with efforts in northern Sudan to identify, retrieve and return abducted persons.
While the formation of CEAWAC was a "clear public acknowledgement by the government of the problem of abduction", the government's stated commitment to the work of CEAWAC had not been matched by an adequate resourcing, and the body had suffered from a lack of transparency and slack financial management, the expert panel said.
According to Atabani, CEAWAC was the "best formula" for the eradication of abductions, but required external support in the form of financing and capacity building.
For its part, the SPLM/A had recently established the Foundation for Rehabilitation, Education and Development of Children Affected by Armed Conflict (FREDCAC), which could help facilitate tracing and monitoring of abductions, the report said.
A particular problem existed in relation to the seasonal movement of the government's military supply train from Babanusa, via Aweil, through SPLM/A territory to the strategic garrison town of Wau, Bahr al-Ghazal. 
The purpose of the train is two-fold: to supply government garrison towns along the railway line, and to destabilise northern Bahr al-Ghazal, the report said. The government recruits murahilin in South Darfur and West Kordofan to protect the train, which create a security cordon several kilometres wide on wither side of the train line by raiding and burning, and looting nearby villages. 
"The raids are brutal, with killing, rape and amputations reported in addition to the looting of cattle and other property and the abduction of civilians," the report said. 
In September 2000, CEAWAC established a "train committee" to monitor any abductions that may occur on the military train. However, the report of the train committee has been challenged by many as failing to report adequately, it said.
According to Atabani, some individuals voluntarily boarded the Babanusa-Wau train, or chose to join the nomadic Arab tribes when they moved northwards. 
US State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker said the US was pleased with the findings of the Commission. "Slavery exists in Sudan, and this report points the way toward ending it," he said.
The US called on the Sudanese government civilian authorities to "control militias and armed forces that are responsible for slave raids, and for the elimination of the infamous supply train that supports government outposts in the south and from which raiding parties originate," Reeker added.

A recent resumption of humanitarian aid flows to the rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains must translate into the achievement of minimum delivery targets to avert a looming food crisis in the region, according to a group of concerned aid agencies.
"At least 3,000 mt of food must be received in Nuba before the end of June, a further 8,000 mt before October, and all planned seed an tool inputs by the end of May," the group said following a recent assessment mission to the areas of the Nuba Mountains held by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
The first four months of the Nuba ceasefire had brought "mixed results" for the civilian population of the SPLM/A-controlled areas of Nuba, sources said in a statement.
An agreement to implement a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, was signed by representatives of the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A in Burgenstock, Switzerland, on 19 January, and set to run for an initial period of six months.
While it was widely expected that the agreement would be renewed for a further six months, there was a danger that an insufficient or delayed humanitarian response could put the ceasefire in jeopardy.
On the positive side, many Nuba people had welcomed remission from the threat of military attacks and aerial bombardment, and the unprecedented return of civilians from government-controlled areas. However, insufficient progress in some of the Nuba ceasefire agreement's key principles had contributed to a "growing erosion of confidence in the ceasefire arrangement" in the SPLM/A-controlled areas, sources said.
"Without immediate and sustained resolve to ensure that the food crisis is averted and that the mechanisms to oversee the agreement are fully functioning, there is a grave danger that this remarkable achievement will have been prematurely squandered," the agencies' statement said.
On-the-ground monitoring indicated that at least 150,000 people in SPLM/A-controlled areas were in urgent need of assistance, requiring a minimum of 11,000 mt of food aid to be delivered over the next five months, the statement said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) on 22 May resumed delivery by air of food aid to rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains. The UN food agency said it planned to deliver 4,000 mt of relief food to those areas between now and September, with an initial 324 mt to be dropped over the next 10 days, a WFP spokeswoman, Laura Melo, said on 22 May. 
"This is the first stage of an operation that envisages assisting 167,000 people in the SPLM/A-controlled areas - Kauda, Karkar, Julud, Lado and Delami," Melo said. 
"In the government-controlled areas, we are taking about 2,300 tonnes by road in the next 30 days, to target around 303,000 people," she added.
Following a joint needs assessment conducted by UN agencies, NGOs, the Sudanese government, the SPLM/A, and donors in January, a plan of assistance to the Nuba Mountains was drawn up, including 4,000 mt of aid to be delivered to each side, originally planned to begin in April. Initial deliveries had been delayed until now, however, due to "various kinds of bureaucratic issues", Melo said.
In order to ensure continued, unimpeded humanitarian access to the region, it was essential to strengthen the mechanisms required for effective political pressure to be applied on all actors, humanitarian sources said. 
After several years of negotiations, the UN was for the first time ever guaranteed humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains in November 2001, during which time WFP provided 2,000 mt of food to rebel-controlled areas.
Included in the Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement is a provision stating that the parties "shall facilitate humanitarian assistance through the opening up of humanitarian corridors and creation of conditions conducive to the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance to displaced persons and other affected persons".
The agreement also states that the chairman of the international Joint Military Commission (JMC), the body responsible for monitoring implementation of the ceasefire agreement, be responsible for approving all flights destined for the Nuba Mountains.
However, because of recent difficulties in delivering humanitarian assistance in the Nubas, particularly in the SPLM/A-controlled areas, there was "growing evidence" to suggest that the vulnerability of the population had actually increased, despite the conditions of the ceasefire, including the exhaustion of household food reserves earlier than usual due to increased pressures brought on by the need to support returnees, sources said. 
"Unless the concerned international bodies [Friends of Nuba, UN agencies and NGOs] take the necessary steps in the coming weeks to demonstrate the potential for the current agreement to offer a real alternative to military struggle, a humanitarian crisis will be precipitated and the process of renewing the ceasefire will be seriously jeopardised," the statement said.
Seasonal heavy rains in the Nuba Mountains are expected to begin in earnest within the coming few weeks, rendering transport across a region with few good roads increasingly difficult. The Nuba Mountains is classed as a sub-humid region, and the rainy season extends from mid-May to mid-October, with annual rainfall ranging from 400 to 800 mm.
In addition to food, seed and tool deliveries, a minimum number of boreholes should be drilled, and adequate supplies of human and livestock drugs delivered before the rains restricted movement by mid-July, sources said.
Efforts were also under way to clear landmines from a sufficient number of roads in the Nubas before the start of heavy rains to allow the JMC to monitor the ceasefire, Chris Clarke, a technical adviser to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), told IRIN recently. The mine clearance team would work for an initial period of 45 to 75 days to make safe key roads in order to allow the Nuba people, as well as the JMC, to move through the region before the start of heavy rains, Clarke said.
"The focus at the moment is on de-mining roads and tracks to allow the JMC and people to move around," he said.
Between 1989 and 2001, 1,135 people had become victims of landmines in the Nuba Mountains, the US State Department recently quoted the Sudanese government as saying.
The Sudanese government has signed, but not yet ratified, the Ottawa Treaty against landmine use, while in October 2001 the SPLM/A signed an agreement on a total ban on antipersonnel landmines throughout territories under its control.
The ceasefire agreement states that the parties shall facilitate "the repair and reopening of roads and the removal of mines", and that the "laying of mines of whatever type shall be prohibited".

A senior official in the Ugandan army has refuted claims that a number of rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA) fighters have offered to surrender following clashes with the Uganda's People's Defence Forces (UPDF) inside southern Sudan. 
Shaban Bantariza, UPDF Director for Information and Public Relations, told IRIN on Monday that LRA rebels had neither surrendered nor had they been surrounded by the Ugandan army, as had been reported in the local media.
Radio Uganda reported on Thursday 23 May that a "sizeable number" of LRA fighters, including two senior officers, who were under siege by the UPDF, had written to the army seeking to surrender. UPDF fourth divisional commander Francis Okello was said to have "welcomed the idea", and had assured the group that they would be offered an amnesty, the report added. 
"There was no such thing as a surrender. Some people were just trying to provoke the situation to see what the government was going to say," Bantariza added. 
An agreement by the Ugandan and Sudanese governments in March has given the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) authorisation to pursue the LRA inside Sudanese territory. Previously supported by Sudan, in retaliation for Uganda's support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the LRA has fought the Uganda government since the late 1980s, from bases in southern Sudan.
The low-intensity war has resulted in severe humanitarian consequences in northern Uganda, where the LRA has abducted about 12,000 children and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, according to humanitarian sources. 
Recent comments attributed by the Ugandan media to Acting UPDF commander James Kazini suggested that it had dislodged LRA fighters and their leader, Joseph Kony, from camps near the southern Sudanese town of Juba, and had surrounded them at the Imatong Mountains in the southeast of the country, where the groups had fled with insufficient supplies. 
Kazini said this was "definitely the last phase" of the Ugandan army operation, for which it has received permission from the Sudanese government, according to Ugandan government-owned New Vision newspaper on 23 May.
"Kony will either be killed or die of hunger, or surrender, within the next 45 days," it quoted Kazini as saying. "His ammunition and food supplies are running out, and this has affected the morale of his fighters." 
However, Bantariza said it the Ugandan army had not, and could not, surround the LRA forces, who were hiding in little groups. "You can't surround people in the mountains: they are not one group, they have been scattered," he added. 
He did express the hope that the campaign against LRA was nearing its end, on the basis that the insurgents were "getting tired of running".
"Because they are tired of running all the time, they are beginning to settle down and fight us," he said on Monday. "We should have some positive results to give you [the media] soon." 
Bantariza confirmed the extension of the anti-LRA military offensive inside Sudan until the end of June, following the expiry of the due date on 19 May.
This was the second extension of the deadline for the operation since Sudan allowed the UPDF onto sovereign territory (some of it effectively controlled by the SPLM/A), to pursue and fight the LRA, which it had previously backed with finance, arms and logistical support.
Kampala has asserted that the terms and duration of the anti-LRA campaign can be altered by an agreement of the Ugandan and Sudanese defence ministers to amend the March protocol which allowed for it. 
The BBC reported on 19 May that the authorities in Khartoum had indicated their intention to have Sudanese forces join in the anti-LRA offensive for the first time, following claims that Sudanese villagers had been killed and displaced in LRA attacks.
In the past month, church groups in southern Sudan have spoken a number of LRA attacks - though not independently verified - in which hundreds of people are believed to have been killed.
Although the Ugandan government has said it hopes to rescue thousands of LRA abductees in the southern Sudan operation, dubbed "Operation Iron Fist", its use of heavy weaponry - including tanks and artillery - has raised alarm among human rights activists.
"It is difficult to see how military confrontation will avoid tragically high casualties," the UK-based organisation African Rights stated in a report earlier this month. The UPDF "seems to have invested little by way of preparations to achieve its tactically complex objective" of securing the release of abductees, it added. 
"As the name of the operation was intended to signal, the government means to deal firmly with the LRA," according to the organisation, which argued that this "belligerent tone" and the deployment of heavy arms in the operation belied Kampala's argument that the objective was to lead captives to safety. It expressed concern at the dearth of rescued abductees so far.
Entitled, "Operation Iron Fist: What Price for Peace in Northern Uganda?", the report said the Ugandan government's effort, based on "pulling a spectacular finish" to the long LRA insurgency in the north, had not gone according to plan so far, with grave consequences for the prospects of peace in the region. 
"To date, the government has not presented convincing arguments as to how this [release of captives] will be achieved without inflicting serious casualties on the captives and without destroying the hard work which the Acholi community... has invested in peace," it stated. 
The preparations for the mission appear to have been rushed, it said, adding that, even from a military perspective, the campaign could hardly be described as a success so far.
Sam Tindifa, head of the Human Rights and Peace Centre in Makerere University, Kampala, told IRIN on Monday that he, too, was unconvinced by the army's claims of success. 
"Much as they claim to have smoked the rebels out of their cans, there is really not much evidence to show us that much is happening. For Kazini to threaten to resign if he fails, we have been hearing that for the last 10 years," Tindifa said.
"These people [in the army] love to make propaganda. If they captured guns and heavy military equipment as they claim, we could have seen them in the newspapers," he added.
Bantariza said the UPDF was not keen on releasing "too much" information on the anti-LRA campaign, since media coverage was already undermining certain aspects of the operation.
"We have decided we have been conducting our operation through the pres for too long. We have decided we will give information if and when it is very necessary," he told IRIN on Monday.
Tindifa argued that Uganda and Sudan would have been better pursuing a political approach to resolving the LRA rebellion.
"This [Operation Iron Fist] was a not a worthwhile process," he said. "They should have pursued a political solution. SPLA would have been part of the solution," he added.
Finding a permanent solution to the LRA insurgency must involve "improved relations with Sudan, raising the standard of life of ordinary people in the north [of Uganda] and a greater sense of political inclusion... a stake in the national economy and political system," according to African Rights.
"No quick-fix military action against the LRA can resolve these issues," it added. Rather, killing Acholi children abducted by the LRA would simply sharpen Acholi grievances "and stoke future strife" in northern Uganda.

The death toll after a government air raid on Rier in Makien County, western Upper Nile, on Tuesday morning has risen to 18 people, with up to 85 others wounded, many seriously, according to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Many of the wounded lost limbs in the raid by an Antonov-32 bomber, in which 16 bombs were reportedly dropped in a series of sorties between 2 am (23:00 GMT) and 8.30 am (05:30 GMT), and the most seriously injured have been evacuated to hospitals in Equatoria, in southern Sudan, and Lokichokio, northwestern Kenya, according to the rebel movement and humanitarian sources.
It was not clear how many of those killed in this attack, about three hours' walk from the front line of fighting, were rebel soldiers, the BBC reported on Thursday. Rier is located south of Bentiu, near the road built to access oil concession Block 5A, but where oil companies have been forced by insecurity to suspend operations. Fighting has been raging for months between government forces and the SPLA in oil-rich Unity State/western Upper Nile. [see IRIN Focus at http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=23300]
The attack on Rier, a relief centre for thousands of displaced civilians, was "a blatant violation of the agreement for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructures which the SPLM/A and the government of Sudan signed in March," according to the rebel spokesman, Samson Kwaje, the same day.
The United States reported in March that it had secured agreement from the government of Sudan and southern rebels to ensure the protection of civilians against military attack.
That followed a government helicopter-gunship attack on a relief food distribution in Bieh, also in western Upper Nile, in February, which killed at least 24 people. Khartoum subsequently apologised and said it would put measures in place to avoid a repetition.
The Khartoum government has denied the SPLM/A reports of the Rier attack this week, with the government spokesman, Abd al-Rahman Hamzah, describing them as "completely untrue", Associated Press (AP) reported on Thursday.
"Sudan has asked the international community to press the rebels to agree on a comprehensive ceasefire in Sudan...," Hamzah said. "Now they want to put the ball in the court of the government by saying it bombed several villages in the [Unity] region."
The NGO Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) has confirmed the incident, saying that its staff were at the location - between Mayam and Mankien - 11 hours after the attack to treat the injured and evacuate the seriously wounded to NPA hospitals in Equatoria. 
"People were sleeping [at the time of the first raid] and therefore taken unaware," it said in a statement. "The situation is described as a carnage, with bodies lying everywhere, legs and arms blown off. Most of those wounded were young boys aged 10 and 11 years." [see http://www.npaid.org/]
The NPA said two journalists were independent witnesses of the attack and that a senior US aid official had observed the gruesome aftermath.
There were no Operation Lifeline Sudan personnel on the ground. This area, in common with most of western Upper Nile, is flight-denied by the Sudanese government. 
Some victims of the Rier bombing had been taken to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Lopiding Hospital at Lokichokio, which was already operating at or near full capacity, according to humanitarian sources.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that it had admitted six people in Lokichokio on Thursday morning, they required surgery for serious injuries, but that it could not confirm that these "weapon-wounded" individuals had come from Rier - or, indeed, that there was any attack on Rier - because it did not have access to that area at the moment.
Those admitted had a variety of serious head, limb and internal injuries, and it might be suspected that these were related to fighting in western Upper Nile, but this could not be confirmed, because the ICRC had not evacuated them from southern Sudan, but just taken them into its care at Lokichokio, the organisation's spokesman in Nairobi, Florian Westphal, told IRIN.
The SPLM/A on Thursday called the attack "a bloody violation", which again demonstrated that the government of Sudan would not abide by whatever proposals US peace envoy Danforth might make. 
The incident was "in violation of an agreement on a military stand-down [or ceasefire] reached in the last 36 hours between the US, Khartoum and the SPLM/A", according to Kwaje. 
That agreement was to operate from 19 to 25 May in order to allow a high-level US humanitarian delegation - led by Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - to visit the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, Bahr al-Ghazal and western Upper Nile, he said.
"This [Rier] attack is therefore calculated to prevent Natsios's visit to the area so that he may not witness for himself the displacement, destruction and plight of the civilian population in the oilfields areas," Kwaje added.
Hamzah, as quoted by AP on Thursday, said it was "completely false" to suggest that the Sudanese government was trying to prevent Natsios from visiting the area, and that his visit had been officially welcomed by Khartoum.
A US diplomat in Nairobi said Natsios's planned visit to Ganyial, some 50 km northwest of Rier, would go ahead as planned, the report added.
The majority of people in Rubkona Province in western Upper Nile have been forced to flee their homes in the last few weeks "due to an intensification of conflict in the highly contested oil-rich areas", the Church World Service reported on Wednesday. Perhaps as many as 75,000 people had been displaced as the government deliberately targeted civilian populations, it added. 
"Victims interviewed have given consistent reports of being bombarded by planes, strafed and hunted down by helicopter gunships, and of being chased and shot at by armed horsemen militias and foot soldiers," it said, adding that this was part of an ongoing, but worsening, experience for the people of western Upper Nile.
Earlier this month, the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan suggested that 50,000 civilians had been forced to flee the express targeting of civilians "in an extended area along the road from the oil site at Rier and southwards" - though the government had claimed the purpose of its military engagement was to rid the area of SPLA forces.
Warring parties in southern Sudan's oil-rich western Upper Nile region are responsible for "appalling" civilian mortality from infectious diseases and violence, the international medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported on 30 April. 
"Thousands of people have died from diseases that can be treated, even during conflict. It is the way the war is waged that limits access to medical services," said Arjan Hehenkamp, Operational Director of MSF, in a statement launching the report, "Violence, Health, and Access to Aid in Unity State/western Upper Nile, Sudan". [see 
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27539]
The humanitarian needs were massive, but there was virtually no aid agency presence in the area, where attacks on health workers and facilities deprived patients of any care, MSF stated.
The European Coalition on Oil in Sudan - echoing earlier reports, including that of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan - reported on 14 May that oil had changed the pattern of the civil war in Sudan, the latest phase of which has been running since 1983.
High-altitude bombers, helicopter gunships and newly equipped ground forces had all been used to kill and drive from their lands thousands of civilians, successfully depopulating vast areas, in order to re-secure them for oil production, it said. 
"What used to be a low-budget bush war... has developed into modern counter-insurgency warfare between asymmetric parties, and the population sits on the losing side," it added.
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

A grouping of nine prominent aid agencies working in Sudan on Thursday warned of the potential for a worsening humanitarian crisis in the south of the country as increased conflict and ongoing flight bans have cut off access to hundreds of thousands of people at a critical time.
"All the conditions are in place for a crisis: lots of fighting, no access for humanitarian assistance, and many frightened, hungry, displaced people," said Jeff Seed, Director of CARE International's operations in southern Sudan.
Even before recent outbreaks of fighting and reduced access, human development indicators were already discouraging in southern Sudan, particularly for those affected by war in Unity (Wahdah) State/western Upper Nile, the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, northern and western Bahr al-Ghazal, and Eastern Equatoria, according to the UN.
On Thursday, the nine aid NGOs called on the warring parties in Sudan to guarantee periods of tranquillity during which fighting would be suspended to allow safe access to affected populations. Such periods and zones of tranquillity are a key element of confidence-building measures proposed by US special peace envoy, John Danforth. 
The organisations also "urged the international community to make clear the extreme urgency of the situation to their Sudanese counterparts and to press for immediate humanitarian access". 
In addition to CARE, the aid agencies which joined the urgent call for humanitarian access were: Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), International Rescue Committee (IRC), Oxfam, Action Against Hunger (ACF USA), Tearfund, Foundation Amurt and World Vision.
The NGOs highlighted, in particular, the problems of severe fighting and flight bans in three areas of southern Sudan: Bahr el-Ghazal, Eastern Equatoria and western Upper Nile, which have cut off humanitarian access to hundreds of thousands of people.
In Bahr el-Ghazal and western Upper Nile, the flight bans had been in place for as long as three months; in Eastern Equatoria, the ban had been in place for at least three years, Thursday's statement said. On 16 May, the government of Sudan announced a flight ban for the entire area of Unity State, encompassing western Upper Nile.
In southern Sudan, all told, "an area of land roughly the size of France is now off-limits to large-scale relief efforts," according to Thursday's joint statement from NGOs operational there.
"Increased fighting has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes at a critical moment - the start of the planting season when crops must be sown to avoid a potentially life-threatening food crisis," it added.
Fighting is raging in Unity State/western Upper Nile between Sudanese government and aligned militia forces, on the one hand, and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), on the other, essentially over control of the area's rich oil resources. This battle for resources has exacerbated the long-running civil war in Sudan, where basic issues of safety, food security, health and nutrition affect millions of people, according to several human rights organisations.
There are also extensive military engagements in Bahr al-Ghazal -exacerbated, ironically, by the redeployment of forces from the Nuba Mountains, where a local ceasefire agreement is in place - although the approach of the rainy season offers hope that these will soon ease, aid officials told IRIN on Thursday.
Though fighting and the denial of access in large swathes of southern Sudan make it impossible for aid groups to accurately determine the severity of the situation, the information that is available is causing concern; the most recent nutritional surveys conducted by both ACF-USA and Tearfund found global malnutrition rates in children under five years to be more than 20 percent in some areas.
"These results have been reported at the start of the hunger gap [the period between harvests] and this situation can only deteriorate unless action is taken," said Maxine Clayton, head of mission of Action Against Hunger-USA's humanitarian programs. Global malnutrition rates above 15 percent are considered to give serious cause for concern. 
The last time aid agencies were cut off from civilians for such an extended period was in 1998,  when a flight ban prevented distribution of food and other relief supplies to Bahr el Ghazal for four consecutive months, according to the NGOs.
On that occasion, they said, "flight bans, poor climatic conditions and an upsurge in fighting were responsible for a famine that killed at least 70,000 people". 
Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian principle - is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), which established principles for the protection and provision of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.
Despite repeated calls for unrestricted access and agreements by the warring parties to assure this, military operations, insecurity, flight bans and the government's alleged depopulation of oil-rich areas to secure them for production have displaced and/or precluded access to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
With an estimated 80,000 people displaced from Ruweng County and another 50,000 from Unity State/western Upper Nile in a pattern of depopulation of oil areas by government forces and aligned militias, the government's ban on humanitarian flights "jeopardises the lives of tens of thousands of people", the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan reported earlier this month. 
Khartoum denies that is targeting civilian populations in oil areas and has blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.
It has also said it will permit land and river corridors for the delivery of relief materials (though aid agencies say relief work would be severely hampered by having such access only, given poor infrastructure and heavy rains), and that it is studying UN proposals "on ways to facilitate conveying humanitarian assistance to the needy," according to the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA). 
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, has repeatedly criticised the severely hampered access of vulnerable people to humanitarian aid in parts of southern Sudan - despite the government and the SPLM/A having formally endorsed the principle of unimpeded access to beneficiaries. 
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also expressed concern about this in a report to the UN Security Council report in October 2001, when he said it was "paramount to ensure the respect by all signatories" of binding agreements on unrestricted humanitarian access.
"It is especially important for the humanitarian action in critical areas of southern Sudan to benefit from an extension of the humanitarian space and to operate with [at least] minimal security guarantees," he stated. [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=12480]
This point was echoed again on Thursday in the combined aid agencies statement on access.
"We desperately need action from leaders on both sides of the conflict in Sudan and in the international community to protect innocent civilians, facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance, and to achieve a just and lasting peace", said Paul Townsend, country representative for CRS in Sudan.

African governments must radically transform their economies to escape the "mire" of dependency, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urged on Thursday.
Speaking at the summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), he said in a global market Africa would "sink or swim together". Meles called on African countries to build closer ties and restructure their economies to help overcome the burden of poverty. He said they must transform their current global trading position, which was detrimental to Africa's development, into one that would benefit the continent. 
"Our economies are small and un-diversified," he told the seventh heads of state meeting of COMESA in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. "Many of our countries are heavily dependent on foreign aid," added Meles, who was appointed chairman of COMESA at the summit.
"Much of government income in our countries depends on import duties. Most of our economic entities have been established in a highly protected environment. "In brief, most of our economies are mired in an environment dominated by rent-seeking activities," he told the delegates at the two day meeting held at the UN's Economic Commission for Africa. He also called on COMESA to do more to ensure that the peoples of the continent played a key part in the economic integration.
COMESA, which was formed in 1994, comprises 20 countries in Africa who have signed up to closer integration and trade. They include Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Their combined financial muscle is said to be in the region of US $4.3 billion.
The heads of state attending the summit included Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Sudan's Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir and Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa, who is also chairman of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The president of Egypt, Husni Mubarak, the outgoing COMESA chairman, was unable to attend because of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
Meles also argued that regional economic integration was the "bedrock" of the African Union, the pan-African body due to replace the OAU in July. He said closer ties would improve Africa's position within the global market and help tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping the continent. 
"Only vibrant and diversified economies can be successfully integrated. It is therefore clear that for the COMESA objectives to be fully achieved, we need to bring about a speedy and fundamental structural transformation of our economies. No amount of political goodwill will suffice in the absence of such a structural transformation of our economies," he stressed.
Meles told the heads of state that their economies were "too small and fragmented" to achieve a speedy transformation alone. "Thus we need closer ties amongst ourselves to speed up economic growth and transformation. We need to link up our transport and communication links, to integrate our infrastructure and harmonise our policies to the maximum extent possible," he said.

The United States said on Tuesday that Sudan had taken some positive steps against terrorism, but  had not made sufficient progress to be removed from the US's blacklist of terrorist-sponsoring nations.
Sudan was one of two countries which seemed "closest to understanding what they must do to get out of the terrorism business", and had "taken measures pointing in the right direction", the US State Department said in its Annual Global Terrorism Report.
Khartoum said on Wednesday that the US' contention that Sudan supports terrorism was erroneous and removed from the facts.
"The government has taken numerous measures in this regard... so Sudan staying on this list of states sponsoring terrorism is a baseless accusation," the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) quoted Minister of State for Foreign Relations Chol Deng Alak as saying. 
The other country named as making serious anti-terrorism efforts was Libya, which is a joint sponsor, with Egypt, of a set of proposals aimed at ending Sudan's 19-year civil war. 
The Sudanese government had stepped up its counter-terrorism operation in collaboration with a number of US agencies, and had investigated and arrested "extremists suspected of involvement in terrorist activities", the report said.
But international terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al-Jama'at al-Islamiyyah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas had continued to use Sudan as a  haven, primarily for conducting logistical and other support activities, it added.
Last month, the US also expressed concern over a speech by Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir in which he called for the establishment of camps to train militants for the Palestinian intifadah, or uprising, against Israel. Washington was informed by the Sudanese government that "there was no intention of setting up camps to train militants", according to the US State Department.
However, the US also made clear to Khartoum that if the Sudanese government was serious about improving its international standing and improving its relations with the United States, "it must cease the rhetoric of jihad [Islamic holy war] and violence", it added. 
Diplomats and analysts say that Sudan is inching its way back into the international fold, eager to shed its isolation, reap the economic benefits of its oil resources and end unilateral US sanctions. Meanwhile the west, including the US, is keen to swop an isolationist policy for constructive engagement, thereby reducing the possibility of violent Islamic radicalism within Sudan or exported from the country. 
The US list of seven state sponsors of terrorism - Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - has been unchanged since 1993, when Sudan was added to the list.
The seven nations listed are subject to a number of US sanctions, including: prohibitions on economic assistance; the opposition by the US of loans by the World Bank and other financial institutions; and a ban on arms-related exports and sales.
The United Nations Security Council in September lifted diplomatic sanctions against Sudan, imposed five years ago to force Sudan to hand over suspects in an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Husni Mubarak.
In its statement on lifting the sanctions, the Council noted Sudan's recent efforts to combat terrorism, and its accession to two conventions for the elimination of terrorist activities: the 1997 International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism and the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of Financing Terrorism.
The resolution to remove the restrictions was adopted by the 15-member Council with 14 votes in favour, and one abstention - from the US. 
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Walter Kansteiner, told journalists on Monday that, although the US had restricted support for the Sudanese government, it would commit financial and human resources to peace efforts in Sudan. 
Support would be extended to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)-sponsored regional peace process, currently chaired by Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, with the former Kenyan army chief of staff, Lazarus Sumbeiywo, acting as envoy.
Kansteiner also said the US administration was looking into plans to upgrade diplomatic representation in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and to provide additional administrative support for the peace process. 
In his report to US President Bush on the outlook for peace in Sudan, US special peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, recommended that Washington "enhance" its diplomatic presence in Khartoum, in order to be effective in a sustained peace process.
The US withdrew its last ambassador from Khartoum before Washington launched missile strikes against targets in Sudan in August 1998 after the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
Following a meeting with Danforth on Monday, Bush praised the special envoy for making "considerable progress" in bringing the warring parties closer to the negotiating table, and called for full compliance with Danforth's four confidence-building measures. 
"The government of Sudan cannot make empty promises while continuing to wage war against its own people. It must stop interfering with food deliveries. It must honour its commitments to Senator Danforth. It must accept that it cannot win the war. It must seek peace," Bush added.

The nature of tribal clashes in the central state of Southern Darfur, which has reportedly seen 50 people killed in recent days, has been exacerbated by an inflow of arms from neighbouring countries which are experiencing instability, according to Sudanese diplomatic sources.
Media reports from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday said Sudanese police and army forces had been deployed in Southern Darfur to prevent further clashes between two Arab tribes, the Rizayqat and Ma'aliyah, after the latest outbreak of violence at the weekend. 
Reuters, which placed the number of the dead at 27, quoted the daily Khartoum Monitor newspaper as saying the violence was part of a pattern of recurrent tribal fighting in the area, where scarcity in grazing areas and economic hardships had caused intense rivalry between cattle communities like the Rizayqat and farming groups like the Ma'aliyah.
Armed groups of Rizayqat tribesmen on Saturday attacked and burnt a village of the rival Ma'aliyah, from Western Darfur, the Associated Press agency (AP) reported on Tuesday. 
"The government of South Darfur, the police, the army and security forces are in full control of the situation there," AP quoted a public statement, issued by the interior ministry on Tuesday, as saying. The fighting was reportedly sparked by a dispute over a cattle grazing area. 
Tribal fighting over pasture and water resources has been part of normal life among nomadic tribes in the in the Darfur regions for generations, but the problem has recently escalated following the influx of arms from Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), particularly the latter, according to Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Dirdiery told IRIN on Wednesday that the upsurge in fighting in the Western Darfur could be attributed to the influx of weapons from Sudan's western neighbour, the CAR. 
"Tribal fighting is not new in that part of the country," Dirdiery said. "It is a nomadic region. Pastoralists are prone to conflict, because they share pasture and water resources... Some of the tribes in this region have put their hands on such weapons, and this generally tends to worsen the nature of conflict in the region."
However, the situation was currently "under control", and chiefs from the two tribes had been brought together to "sort out their differences", he added. 
According to Dirdery, Sudan's borders with the CAR and Chad were not properly defined with natural barriers and remained "generally porous", making it difficult for the Khartoum government to exercise effective control on the arms influx into its territory. 
The CAR has been subject to internal strife, including a coup attempt on 28 May 2001 when soldiers loyal to former President Andre Kolingba launched an offensive against current President Ange-Felix Patasse. 
The CAR capital, Bangui, was again besieged by hostilities in November 2001, when CAR government forces tried to arrest a former army commander, Gen Francois Bozize, on behalf of a judicial commission probing the coup attempt of 28 May. Soldiers allied to Bozize came to his defence, and five days of intermittent fighting ensued in the northern districts of Bangui, before Bozize and his forces were dislodged and fled northward to the southern Chadian town of Sarh.
The CAR authorities then accused Chad of backing Bozize and his supporters, who repeatedly engaged in confrontations with CAR military forces along the two countries' common border. A nationwide curfew, imposed after the May coup attempt, was only lifted on 9 May 2002.
The regional tensions and military build-ups, combined with the massive availability of weapons in southern Sudan as a result of the long-running civil war, enable tribal groups, militias, dissident and rebel groups, and ordinary civilians in the Horn of Africa to gain access to small arms with unprecedented ease, according to regional analysts.
Frequent complaints of banditry raids in the Darfur region, mainly attributable to the influx of weapons from the CAR and Chad, need be addressed through long-term measures by the government, according to Dirdiery. 
However, the area where the latest Rizayqat-Ma'aliyah clashes had taken place was "not too close" to the CAR and raised a different set of issues, he added.
Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir had declared a state of emergency in Southern Kordofan  and formed a high-level security body with "sweeping powers" to arrest, try and punish those found guilty of fuelling the tribal clashes, AP reported on Tuesday.
"This is a committee that has sweeping powers. It can arrest and deport any person," it quoted Salah Ali al-Ghali, the governor of Southern Darfur, as saying on state-run Radio Omdurman.

The United States said on Monday that it considered both the Khartoum government and southern rebels responsible for continued progress on four key US-sponsored humanitarian agreements.
"We will hold the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement strictly accountable for the implementation of the humanitarian agreements that have already been made, particularly the agreement banning intentional attacks against non-combatant civilians and the Nuba Mountains cease-fire," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement.
Head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios, would shortly be travelling to Sudan to evaluate humanitarian requirements, review compliance with the agreements, and to visit the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, Boucher added.
"The parties must be prepared to comply fully and completely with all agreements reached," the statement said.
The statement followed a meeting between US President George W Bush and US Special Envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, to discuss prospects for peace in Sudan.
Danforth submitted to Bush a report entitled "The outlook for peace in Sudan" last month, in which he outlined the progress made on his four confidence-building measures and recommended that the US continue to serve as an intermediary between the warring parties in Sudan.
During trips to Sudan in November 2001 and January of this year, Danforth was instrumental in achieving a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains; an undertaking from the government and SPLM to end the abduction of civilians; an agreement to allow international monitors to investigate attacks on civilians; and the establishment of zones and times of tranquillity to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid in certain parts of the country.
Boucher said the US would "actively support" the efforts of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), currently being led by Kenya, while saying that the US was also prepared to work closely with other, non-IGAD, regional neighbours, particularly Egypt.
Egypt and Libya have put forward proposals in a parallel peace initiative, dubbed the Joint Egyptian-Libyan Initiative, which - unlike the principles accepted by Khartoum and the SPLM/A under the IGAD initiative - does not include a provision for self-determination for south Sudan.
"We don't want to be so categorical about it, but IGAD definitely has the lead," said Walter Kansteiner, US Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, quoted by AFP news agency on Monday.
In Danforth's report, released on 14 May, however, the US peace envoy said that while the view of self-determination contained within the IGAD declaration of principles was one which included the option of secession, a "preferable" and more "feasible" view would simply ensure the right of southern Sudanese to live under a government that respected their religion and culture.
"The next steps for the administration are focused on means for achieving a just and viable peace in Sudan, and we intend to actively support the efforts of the international community in doing that," AFP quoted Kansteiner as saying.
The US branches of four major aid agencies on Friday (17 May) commended progress made on Danforth's four confidence-building measures, but called for implementation of these measures to be accelerated, particularly regarding the achievement of full humanitarian access in the Nuba Mountains.
CARE, World Vision, International Rescue Committee and Save the Children Fund also called for progress on the four measures to "lead to an expanded but convergent peace process", which would address the conflict's underlying causes, including the right to self-determination for southern Sudan.
Meanwhile, Kansteiner said that Danforth had agreed to remain on as US special envoy to Sudan, a post he assumed on 6 September 2001, according to AFP.
"The considerable progress made to date needs to be pursued without any loss of momentum," Danforth said in his report.

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

The EC has allocated 2.6 million euros (about US $2.3 million) to support peace initiatives in Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia under its Rapid Reaction Mechanism (RRM).
An EC statement on Thursday made available to IRIN said the aid "is to provide rapid support to the negotiations on the future of Somalia, to assist in the demarcation of the Eritrean/Ethiopian border and to finance emergency mine-clearing operations to support the ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan".
According to the statement the programme, being under the RRM, will focus on highly visible actions demonstrating the importance the EC attaches to the initiatives currently being undertaken in these countries. The programme was additional to and supportive of other community programmes under the European Development Fund, it said.
The EC statement said the programme included a financial contribution to the initial phase of the reconciliation process in Somalia, which would start with an inclusive conference to be organised in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in May/June 2002. The EC's contribution would cover the main expenses for the first conferences, including possible technical assistance. 
The programme would also include a contribution to a UN trust fund for the demarcation of the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and as a first contribution towards mine-clearing operations, and emergency mine-clearing operations in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan aimed at providing access to cities and water wells.
The statement said the RRM should be seen in the context of the of the EC's commitment to the countries of the Horn of Africa, where more than 130 million euros were disbursed. "The Commission will follow up these activities through the European Development Fund where over 1 billion euros is in the process of being programmed for these countries," concluded the statement.

In a new report submitted to US President George W. Bush, US Envoy for Peace in Sudan John Danforth has recommended that the US continue to serve as an intermediary between the warring parties in Sudan.
In the report, released on Tuesday, Danforth recommended that participation by the US in the search for peace must be "collaborative and catalytic", as well as "energetic and effective". At the least, this would mean the US should enhance its presently "light" diplomatic presence in Sudan in order to be effective an participant in a sustained, intensive peace process, Danforth recommended, as well as strengthening the number of Washington-based personnel dedicated to the country.
Danforth said the principal conclusion of his mission was that the war between north and south was not winnable by either side in terms of achieving their present objectives. "Therefore, this is the time for a major push for a compromise settlement," he said. "I believe that both the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement have given sufficient indications that they want peace to warrant the energetic participation of the United States in a long-term peace process," he added.
During April 2002, Danforth said, both sides had offered proposals to the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) suggesting "a rethinking of previously held positions", and that both sides had shown that it was possible to agree on contentious issues and to permit international monitoring of the implementation of their agreements.
He cited the example of the Nuba Mountains agreement, which he described as "extraordinary": the ceasefire was holding, international monitors were arriving and a long-term relief and rehabilitation effort was beginning. He said agreements on slavery and attacks against civilians were equally encouraging.
He added, however, that progress made on the four test points which his mission had introduced - gaining humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains, the abolition of slavery, the cessation of attacks on civilians and the introduction of "days of tranquillity" to allow for humanitarian intervention - had been "exceedingly difficult" and "grudging". Both sides wanted the conflict resolved, but on their own terms, he said. 
"The extreme difficulty of reaching agreement between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement underscores the essential importance of outside intermediaries in a peace process, including the United States." He added that the usefulness of outside intervention would depend on the willingness of the parties to the conflict to live up to any commitments made, and that any participation by the US should be reviewed continually in light of this. 
"A breakdown in the implementation of the four test agreements would bring into question the parties' commitment to peace," he added.
With regard to the contentious oil issue in Sudan, Danforth said a fair allocation of oil resources could be the key to working out broader political issues if it were possible to find a monetary formula for sharing oil revenues between the government of Sudan and the people of the south. He said he had been urging the US government to draw upon experts to develop the best thinking on how the distribution of oil revenues could further the cause of peace.
He added that while the view of self-determination contained within the IGAD declaration of principles was one which included the option of secession, a more "feasible" and "preferable" view would simply ensure the right of southern Sudanese to live under a government that respected their religion and culture.
Danforth repeatedly stressed that the enforcement of any agreements made was essential for peace. "Without enforcement, the United States could invest much effort and prestige in working out an arrangement that, while sounding good when it is announced, would soon evaporate." An idea worth considering, he said, would be the establishment by the United Nations Security Council of a special committee to monitor the implementation of a peace agreement and report at regular intervals to the Council on any problems. 
In conclusion, Danforth recommended that southern Sudan be accorded "a high priority" by the US government in the provision of humanitarian and developmental aid.
Senator Danforth was appointed as Envoy for Peace on 6 September 2001. His mandate was to determine the commitment to peace by the parties to the Sudan conflict, and to recommend whether the US should engage energetically in efforts to bring a just peace to Sudan.
To view the full report see: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/outlook_for_peace_in_sudan.pdf

The UK-based advocacy organisation African Rights has said that the Ugandan army's military campaign - entitled "Operation Iron Fist" - to root out Joseph Kony's rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has grave consequences for the prospects of peace and for the people of northern Uganda. 
In a statement issued on 9 May, African Rights said that by taking the war into southern Sudan, the Ugandan government had "banked on pulling off a spectacular end to the conflict in the north", but that its calculations had not gone according to plan. 
African Rights said preparations for the mission appeared to have been rushed, and that even from a military perspective, the campaign could not be described as a success so far, with the Ugandan and Sudanese forces suffering "exceptionally high casualties" at the hands of the LRA in separate attacks in March, and with "scores of men killed or injured". 
Military missions with tight deadlines were a recipe for political and humanitarian mistakes, said African Rights, and the limited time period allowed for the operations in Sudan was likely to intensify the pressure on the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) to deliver, with the result that minimising casualties was unlikely to be considered a major priority. 
Following research among the Acholi people of northern Uganda - to whom most of the LRA recruits belong - African Rights said the only way to end the conflict was through dialogue and peaceful strategies, in order to deprive Joseph Kony of recruits and political support. 
"Disregard for the views of local people is a major reason for the problems that have beset this initiative from the outset," says African Rights. While a substantial number of northerners make it clear that they would welcome a decisive military victory by the government over Joseph Kony and the LRA, "they know only too well that military action will entail the loss of more Acholi lives, prolong insecurity and ensure that dislocation and displaced camps continue without respite". 
"The most widely held view among the Acholi is that the current military operation should not have taken place at all," says African Watch. 
Peaceful resolution of this long-standing conflict was never an easy option, the organisation added. This had always been understood by the people of northern Uganda, who viewed dialogue and amnesty as the only way to secure a sustainable peace. "From their point of view, a crucial but delicate and complicated exercise has been needlessly jeopardised in the search for a short-term solution, which now risks deepening and prolonging the conflict." 
The Ugandan army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN on Friday that the UPDF had "taken the problem of the LRA back to its source" by conducting "Operation Iron Fist" in Sudan. He said various dialogues had been tried with the LRA since 1987, which had collapsed, and after which the LRA had continued to fight. "Those talking about a peaceful resolution, that's what we would wish as well, but all the talks have failed." 
Regarding the African Rights report, he said: "The report does not have all the facts or the historical background of this conflict, and how it has progressed since 1987. It has got a lot of missing links." Shaban said Kony was not interested in peaceful dialogue, and that he had stated that he would not take advantage of the amnesty on offer, nor would he allow others to take advantage of it. 
He added that the Ugandan army considered the operation in Sudan to be very successful. It had managed to reduce the LRA's capacity for war by capturing a number of arms and food supplies, he said. He said that because LRA members had begun to antagonise their Sudanese hosts, by killing them, they were proving that they were "terrorists" and the UPDF was therefore achieving a political success. 
He added that the UPDF had killed approximately 70 rebels, while losing five soldiers and one officer itself. 

The international aid agency Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the advocacy organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) have both welcomed the report produced by US Special Envoy for Sudan John Danforth on the prospects for peace in Sudan, while simultaneously expressing reservations about specific points in it.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, CRS applauded the progress made by Danforth, but urged for greater attention be paid to the right of self-determination and the destructive role of oil exploitation in Sudan. The agency said the report addressed the issue of self-determination in "a limited manner".
"Many Sudanese churches - key actors within civil society - strongly believe that unity cannot come at the price of sacrificing justice, and that the full exercise of the right of self-determination by the people of Sudan is the only true means for promoting justice and facilitation of a lasting peace," CRS stated.
"The war must end in peace with justice. Our suffering people should therefore be allowed to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development," CRS quoted a statement issued in March 2002 by Sudanese church leaders as saying.
CRS shared the report's affirmation of oil as a key issue, the agency said, but added that negotiations over oil revenue-sharing agreements could not proceed while human rights abuses using oil revenue, including attacks on civilians, continued unabated. "Both the government and international oil companies operating in Sudan have a moral responsibility to ensure that oil does not contribute to conflict or repression."
HRW said the Danforth mission had resulted in "major steps towards improving the human rights crisis in Sudan", and that it had made human rights recommendations crucial to the future of the country.
"The United States can play a key role in efforts to secure peace and human rights in Sudan," said Jemera Rone, HRW's Susan researcher. "Senator Danforth has made a useful contribution, and President Bush now needs to pledge the United States' firm support for human rights as a key to the peace process."
One shortcoming of the report, however, was that in discussing strategies for the future of Sudan, it elevated freedom of religion above other basic rights, said HRW. "This approach fails to come to grips with the broad nature of human rights violations that are the root causes of the 19-year-old civil war."
The use of torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions, the lack of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, and in particular the second-class citizenship and discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnicity against many Sudanese, not only southerners, had all contributed to the current conflict, said HRW.
"The Danforth report is not US policy at this time," said Rone. "Uproar over the self-determination point has distracted from the real human rights accomplishments of the Danforth agreements, and the need to provide substantial resources to see their implementation," she cautioned.
Former Senator Danforth was appointed as peace envoy on 6 September 2001. His mandate was to determine the commitment to peace by the parties to the Sudan conflict, and to recommend whether the US should engage energetically in efforts to bring about a just peace in Sudan.

The NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF) on Tuesday expressed urgent concern about an "alarming food crisis" it said was emerging in Unity (Wahdah) State, also known as western Upper Nile, in southern Sudan. The food and nutrition situation was particularly worrying in Bentiu and Rob Kona areas, it added.
Already last year, at the same time, the malnutrition rate among young children was 20 percent in these areas, and it rose to between 30 and 40 percent a few months later, according to ACF, which said it was now sounding the alarm in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
"We cannot then say we did not know; we cannot say there was nothing we could do," the NGO stated.
No general food distribution had been undertaken by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) for the population between January and March this year, with those distributions which did take place limited to displaced people who arrived in Bentiu and Rob Kona in February and March, according to ACF.
In April, the residents of this area received only half-rations, even though most of them are totally dependent on these distributions to meet their needs, it stated. Moreover, it said, the period of the "hunger gap" - traditionally difficult, coming between the year's two harvests - was approaching, and ACF food aid distribution centres were already seeing an increasing number of people suffering from malnutrition.
[see Sudan page at http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf]
WFP told IRIN on Tuesday that the agency traditionally scaled back on food distributions from January to March, because this was the post-harvest period when people typically had access to some food resources, and the agency wanted to avoid food aid dependency as much as possible. 
"We are now reaching 'the lean season' when stocks are needed much more, and this is why we're particularly interested in getting flight access to western Upper Nile," said a WFP official, Laura Melo, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. 
Melo said the main problem in reaching Unity State at the moment was that the government of Sudan was currently denying flight access for the whole of western Upper Nile. Some or all districts in the area had been "flight-denied" by the government for months now, and the government had denied access to the whole region for the month of May for security reasons, she added. 
Serious military engagements have been taking place for some months between government of Sudan forces and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in western Upper Nile, according to diverse media and humanitarian sources.
The SPLA has said the fighting began in February when the government tried to force residents and the rebel movement out of the area in order to secure it for oil production. The government denies there has been forcible displacement of civilians, and says it is involved in defending oil installations from attack. 

The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) said on Sunday that they had killed at least 18 members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on Friday, during their first major contact with the Ugandan rebel force in a continuing campaign inside south Sudan.
Sudan indicated in March that it had allowed the Ugandan army to operate against the LRA - which it had supported financially and militarily until recently - inside Sudanese territory for a limited period in order to "foster and maintain security across their common border".
The UPDF-LRA clashes had occurred at Katire, in the Imatong Hills area between the garrison towns of Magwe and Torit in Eastern Equatoria (about 60 km from the Ugandan border), The New Vision government-owned newspaper on Monday quoted the UPDF spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, as saying.
There is considerable confusion about casualties, since the independent Monitor newspaper quoted him as saying that 18 LRA fighters had been killed, while The New Vision put the number at 32, and the Associated Press quoted Bantariza as saying that the Ugandan army had counted 50 LRA bodies, one by one.
"We are still searching the battle zones and blood trails," Bantariza told The New Vision. "The death toll may reach about 50." Five soldiers had been wounded on the UPDF side, he added.
LRA forces initially attacked UPDF positions on Thursday 2 May, but were repulsed, according to Bantariza. When they returned on Friday, the battle lasted two hours in the late afternoon, The New Vision quoted him as saying.
"Since we went to Sudan, Kony has avoided us," Bantariza told The New Vision. "We made them run around and round. Now they have started to attack us, because they are tired of running. I think we are nearing their hide-outs."
There was no independent confirmation of the casualties or outcome of Friday's battle in the Imatong Hills - described as extremely difficult terrain for combat, with sharp peaks and heavily wooded - though diplomatic sources told IRIN that the incidence of serious clashes had been confirmed at a high level in Kampala, along with a significant number of fatalities on both sides. 
Uganda and Sudan said they would do all they could to assure the safety and secure the release of thousands of child abductees among the LRA forces, but the United Nations Children's Fund has expressed concern for the fate of the abductees (few of whom had been traced since the start of the UPDF's "Operation Iron Fist"), including those who may be caught up in fighting.
The two countries are scheduled to hold a meeting of defence ministers on 17 May to determine whether or not the UPDF needs more time to complete its campaign against the LRA within Sudan. The current deadline for completion of the operation is 18 May. 
The anti-LRA campaign is considered an important test of recently improved Ugandan-Sudanese relations - both sides now having agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations at ambassadorial level - and the failure until last week of the UPDF to seriously confront the rebel force in southern Sudan had raised suspicions among some observers that Khartoum had not completely severed its ties with the LRA.
Although the LRA was an outgrowth of the "spiritualist" movement of Alice Lakwena, which emerged in northern Uganda in the mid-1980s, by 1995 it began operating from Sudan with the support of the government there as Khartoum sought to get back at Uganda for its support of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), according to observers. 
Conditions began to change in the wake of the 11 September 2001 events, the Washington-led international coalition against terrorism and Washington's classification of the LRA as a terrorist organisation. This, in turn, was instrumental in the government of Sudan ending its support for the organisation, diplomatic sources told IRIN.
Sudan and Uganda agreed in late April to re-establish full diplomatic ties, which were severed in 1995 as each country accused the other of backing rebel groups, and to appoint full ambassadors in Khartoum and Kampala. 
Now, although no "special relationship" or significant neighbourly friendship is expected between the two countries in the near future, Sudan has stopped supporting the LRA, and overt military assistance from Uganda to the SPLM/A may have - or has - ceased, despite sustained sympathy for the rebel movement, according to regional analysts.
Khartoum's wish to reduce Kampala's opposition, and the latter's need to end the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda and from southern Sudan may mean the time is right for various modest improvements as they learned to coexist and to make necessary but minor adjustments, they added.

Five child abductees have been returned to their families in the first ever cross-line flight from government- to rebel-held areas, Save the Children Fund (UK) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.
"The first-ever flight for abducted children from the government side to a rebel area opens the possibility of bringing many more children back home," Wendy Fenton, Country Representative of SCF-UK, southern Sudan, said in a joint statement by SCF-UK and UNICEF.
The five boys, aged between 11 and 17, were flown form Khartoum to the town of Malwal Kon, northern Bahr al-Ghazal, on Wednesday 1 May, and were accompanied by a staff member from SCF-UK's Khartoum office.
"This is a major breakthrough," said Kate Halff of SCF-UK, Khartoum.
Most of the abductions of ethnic Dinka women and children are carried out by Murahilin (nomadic) militias, frequently made up of members of the Baqqarah tribes (Rizayqat and Misariyyah Humr), raiding villages in northern Bahr al-Ghazal, according to humanitarian sources.
The timing of raids often appeared to be associated with the dry season movement of a government military train moving from the north near Babanusah south to the strategic town of Wau and back, sources said. 
UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, has highlighted the negative role of nomadic Arab tribes (mainly the Baqqarah, Zaghawah and Misariyyah) from which the government has formed Murahilin militias, deeply implicated in abductions.
Fenton told IRIN that although the returns represented a breakthrough, it would be preferable in future to return children to their families by land.
"Air flight is now an option but we would like to be able to do this by land, if both sides create the appropriate, peaceful conditions," she said.
A US-led eminent persons group on slavery, abduction and forced servitude, established in March, has been asked to recommend steps that can be taken by the conflict parties to end such abuses. Led by Penn Kemble, a senior scholar at the US-based human rights organisation Freedom House, the group is expected to report to US Secretary of State Colin Powell after its second trip to northern and southern Sudan, planned for mid-May.
It was hoped that last week's cross-line flight and release would lead to many more people being allowed to go home, UNICEF and SCF-UK stated.
The government in Khartoum has repeatedly denied that slavery exists in Sudan, while admitting that there is a problem of some tribal militias abducting civilians. Slavery was officially abolished in Sudan in 1924, according to humanitarian sources.
UNICEF, SCF-UK and the Sudanese government's Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC) believe that up to 6,000 southern Sudanese children and women may still be held against their will in government-held northern Sudan, the statement said. 
To date, CEAWC has identified about 1,200 possible cases of abduction - of which 700 have been reunified with their families and about 500 are awaiting the identification of families or communities, humanitarian sources told IRIN. 
On 5 February, Ahmad al-Mufti, a former chairman of CEAWC and recently reappointed to the body, drafted a one-year provisional plan of action to eradicate abduction, sources said. 
"The challenge now is to put a stop once and for all to raiding, and return many more children home, finally ending a terrible cycle of abuse," Thomas Ekvall, UNICEF representative and the UN's acting Resident Coordinator, said in Friday's statement.

Members of the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and their leader, Joseph Kony, have killed up to 300 civilians in southern Sudan in the past week, in retaliation for their refusal to support the insurgent group, according to a senior Ugandan army spokesperson. 
Shaban Bantariza, the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) Director of Information and Public Relations, told IRIN on Friday that the LRA had in the past week been "carrying out ritual killings in different places", similar to the earlier alleged massacre of 60 mourners in the Agoro Mountains, not far from the Ugandan border.
"Kony has been killing in different places," he said. "The numbers are soaring. Right now we know they can't be less than 300."
A Sudanese diplomat in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and officials of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which operates in southern Sudan, have said, however, that they could not verify whether these alleged incidents had actually happened.
George Garang, a spokesman for the SPLM/A in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, told IRIN on Friday that the movement had little to say by way of clarifying the issue.
"We have no information on what is happening other than that there have been civilian deaths. As to who is killing them, we really don't have any idea," Garang said. 
Bantariza said he had on Thursday sent a group of local and international journalists to the areas where the incidents reportedly happened to "verify the truth for themselves". According to him, Kony had turned against the southern Sudanese civilians for refusing to support his movement with food and cattle.
"The simple reason why Kony is doing these things is because he is annoyed and desperate," he said. "The villagers have plenty of food and animals, which Kony wants, but they have refused to sustain a Ugandan rebellion. So he is trying to subdue them and eat their food."
Earlier this week, local and international media organisations reported that, on 26 April, a group of armed LRA fighters had intercepted a funeral procession and shot dead all 60 mourners. Quoting Bantariza, the agencies said the attack had taken place in the Agoro Mountains, which straddle the Sudan-Ugandan border and where the rebels had taken refuge from the Ugandan army offensive, being carried out with permission from Khartoum and dubbed "Operation Iron Fist".
"Kony attacked a funeral procession of about 60 people, forced them to cook the corpse in sorghum and eat it. They thought that they would survive if they obeyed, but the rebels shot and killed all of them after they had eaten the corpse," Reuters quoted Bantariza as saying.
Siraj al-Din Hamid, the charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, told IRIN on Tuesday he had not yet received any official response regarding the incident from the Sudanese government.
"I can't confirm it yet," he said. "I only saw reports of it in the newspapers. I haven't yet received any reaction from Khartoum."
"If this is true, it is a horrible and horrendous crime which justifies the [Uganda and Sudanese army] activities against Kony and the LRA," Hamid added. 
Until recently - and with support from the Khartoum in retaliation for Kampala's alleged support for the SPLM/A - the LRA has been waging a low-intensity war against President Yoweri Museveni's government in northern Uganda. The war, has resulted in severe humanitarian consequences in northern Uganda, where the LRA has abducted about 12,000 children and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, according to humanitarian sources. 
[see also
However, recent months have seen significant improvements in relations between Sudan and Uganda, resulting in the withdrawal of Khartoum's support for the LRA and the signing of a defence protocol in March this year which has allowed the UPDF to pursue LRA inside Sudanese territory.

Uganda and Sudan agreed on 27 April to re-establish full diplomatic ties, severed in 1995 when each was accusing the other of backing opposition rebel groups, and to exchange ambassadors.
Ugandan Foreign Minister James Waphakabulo and visiting Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Isma'il had agreed, during a meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to upgrade diplomatic representation, and to establish a permanent Joint Ministerial Committee to undertake and supervise improving bilateral relations.
The Ugandan government also agreed "to expedite and maximise the Ugandan factor in the realisation of a sustainable peace in southern Sudan under the umbrella of IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development]." 
Relations between Kampala and Khartoum had been poor since the National Islamic Front (NIF) - since transformed into the National Congress (NC) party - came to power in Sudan in 1988, and antagonism between the two governments peaked in the mid to late 1990s.
Five years ago, the Sudanese government - whose Islamist path since 1989 has raised concerns among its neighbours - was effectively marginalised in eastern Africa, and the Ugandan government, which has close links with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), was among its most militant opponents, according to regional analysts. 
Sudan has publicly stated that it had provided the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and another Ugandan rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces with financial and military support, in retaliation for Ugandan support for the SPLM/A, while Uganda has insisted that it only extended moral, as opposed to military, support to the Sudanese rebel movement.
However, relations between Sudan and Uganda have improved significantly in recent months, particularly after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir for the first time in years at a summit in Khartoum in January. Isma'il also met Museveni at State House in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, last week to deliver a verbal message from Bashir. 
Museveni's participation at that summit meeting of the regional IGAD in Khartoum in January, when he met Bashir face to face - and without aides - became the source of endless speculation in Uganda, according to a political scientist in Makerere University.
It was that meeting which reinvigorated the countries' shared will to implement the provisions of the Nairobi reconciliation agreement signed in December 1999, "and to further foster and maintain security across their common border" - thus paving the way for Sudanese acceptance of the Ugandan army crossing the border in pursuit of the LRA, according to a joint Ugandan-Sudanese statement released through the UN Security Council in March.
[see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=26548]
Now, although no "special relationship" or significant neighbourly friendship is expected between the two countries in the near future, the Khartoum government has stopped supporting the LRA, and overt military assistance from Uganda to the SPLA may have - or has - ceased, despite sustained sympathy for the rebel movement, according to regional analysts.
The appointment in July 2000 of Siraj al-Din Hamid, the Sudanese charge d'affaires in Kampala, after he had prepared a report critical of his government's support for the LRA, was a notable landmark in the course of the improving bilateral relations, according to diplomatic sources in Kampala. 
However, the LRA issue is also a test of Ugandan-Sudanese relations, and the failure to date of the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF) to seriously confront - much less defeat - the rebel force in southern Sudan may raise suspicions in Kampala that Khartoum - or, at least, elements of the Khartoum government - has not completely severed its ties with the LRA, analysts say.
Improved relations followed a series of meetings and negotiations set in train by the Nairobi reconciliation agreement of December 1999, brokered by former US President Jimmy Carter, albeit that the agreement itself resulted in no immediate breakthrough.
The foreign policies of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda must be understood in light of its origins and basis of support in the south and west of the country, according to analysts contacted by IRIN. 
Accordingly, Rwanda was a major interest, and many members of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), including President Paul Kagame, were active members of the NRM. Similarly, when Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo - DRC), to the west, began to disintegrate, the NRM considered this a threat to Ugandan security and sent in the UPDF.
Another major focus of Ugandan foreign policy interest has been its fellow members of the East Africa Community, Kenya and Tanzania, with which Uganda shares a colonial history, important economic ties and outlets to the sea.
Uganda developed linkages to the countries to the north, including Sudan, through the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD), but it was only later, when the organisation reinvented and renamed itself IGAD and assumed a major role in regional security, that Uganda began to take a keener interest, observers told IRIN.
An SPLM/A official contacted by IRIN noted that all Ugandan governments - including that of Idi Amin, himself a Muslim - have been sympathetic to the aspirations of the southern Sudanese and wanted to have a buffer zone between an Arab-Islamic dominated northern Sudan and Uganda.
Museveni is also Pan-Africanist in the Nyerere mould, and likely continue to empathise with the SPLM/A and its leader, John Garang, who has been a friend from their days together at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, according to a Kampala-based diplomat. Indeed, Museveni was recently heard to wonder whether Khartoum was "an Arab bridge" to Sub-Saharan Africa, or "a bridgehead" - that is, a military entry point.
A number of factors are behind the changing relations between the two countries, according to analysts interviewed by IRIN:
- First was the failure of Khartoum's efforts to export political Islam, and its subsequent attempts from the late 1990s to end its isolation by improving relations with its neighbours.
- Second was the lack of success of Museveni's attempts to inflict a military defeat on the LRA, and the growing resentment the insurgency was causing among the Acholi people of northern Uganda (predominantly in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts), who have been the major victims of the LRA's terrorist campaign; pressure was thus mounting to end the security problem in the north.
- Third, the recent partial withdrawal of Ugandan forces from the DRC enabled Museveni to devote additional military resources to the problems in the north.
- Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, the US's official classification of the LRA as a terrorist organisation (after the 11 September events) inspired Khartoum with enough fear to completely break relations with the Ugandan insurgent group.
Current military cooperation between Khartoum and Kampala in the latter's campaign against the LRA in southern Sudan is a critical indicator of these changes.
Despite some concerns on the part of the SPLM/A, the government of Uganda has so far given little indication of a willingness to terminate its relationship with the southern Sudanese rebel movement, according to observers.
And a Sudanese diplomat told IRIN that his government did not expect Kampala to do so; rather, he said, Khartoum was urging Uganda to use its influence to pressure the SPLM/A into accepting a comprehensive ceasefire - something to which the rebels are strongly opposed in the absence of a comprehensive political settlement.
At present there is little sign of movement, but many SPLM/A officials, who have looked upon Uganda as a bedrock of support, now acknowledge that they have few supporters in the country outside the government. 
The SPLM/A has frequently presented itself as the front line against expansionist Islam and, while this has some resonance in neighbouring Kenya, it does not have the same impact in Uganda, according to observers. Moreover, the Acholi in northern Uganda are adamantly opposed to the SPLM/A, because they regarded Khartoum's support for the LRA as a response to Kampala's backing of the Sudanese rebels.
Southern Sudanese note with concern the upgraded diplomatic relations between Sudan and Uganda, the posting of military observers in each other's countries, and the expectation that flights between Kampala and Khartoum will begin in June.
Analysts also say that with the recent high-level US engagement in peace efforts on Sudan - particularly by the special envoy, John Danforth, whose draft report on the situation to President George W. Bush is reportedly circulating already - civil war conditions are very much in flux, and Washington's close relations with Kampala render the Museveni government highly susceptible to its pressure.
US diplomats in the region, like their Sudanese counterparts, are heavily emphasising the need for expansion of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire, which is currently restricted to that area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan. 
So, while there is no love lost between the Sudanese and Ugandan governments, Khartoum's wish to reduce Kampala's opposition, and the latter's need to end the LRA insurgency may mean the time is right for various modest improvements as they learn to coexist and to make necessary but minor adjustments, according to regional analysts.
Thus, diplomatic tension was contained after Uganda became the only African country to vote in favour of the 19 April UN resolution, which expressed concern over human rights abuses in Sudan, by agreement between the two countries on 27 April "to coordinate with each other in the multilateral sphere, and to discuss in advance their respective positions with each other, in case of differences, before taking action".
This meant that the two countries had effectively "buried the hatchet" over differences that emerged following Uganda's decision to back a recent UN Human Rights Commission resolution urging Sudan to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, on Monday.
"That issue has been completely sorted out. We really have buried the hatchet," Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Kenya, told IRIN. 
"We shouldn't confuse the Uganda-Sudan bilateral relations with specific issues like human rights," a Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman stated.
With Khartoum's recent moderation, the lure of oil imports, and significantly altered international circumstances, notably the current US-Sudanese cooperation in the area of terrorism, countries in the region are all moving cautiously to improve their relations with the Sudanese government, according to political observers.
[on Ethiopia-Sudan relations, see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27484]
Yet, none of these countries was laying aside fears about the long-term objectives of the ruling Islamist NC in Sudan, which still included the export of political Islam, the observers stated.
So while Ugandan and Sudanese national interests, as well as regional patterns and the post-11 September global political environment, have combined to facilitate enhanced diplomatic relations, it is not likely to be all plain sailing between Khartoum and Kampala. 
Rather, a long history of antagonism, the unpredictability and volatility of politics in the Horn of Africa, the limited willingness of either Khartoum or Kampala to make more than minor compromises and doubts about the outcome of the present Ugandan army assault on the LRA is likely to keep the Joint Ministerial Committee on bilateral relations fully occupied, observers added.

Warring parties in southern Sudan's oil-rich western Upper Nile region are responsible for "appalling" civilian mortality from infectious diseases and violence, the international medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a new report released on Monday. 
"Thousands of people have died from diseases that can be treated, even during conflict. It is the way the war is waged that limits access to medical services," Arjan Hehenkamp, Operational Director of MSF, said in a statement launching the report, "Violence, Health, and Access to Aid in Unity State/western Upper Nile, Sudan".
MSF highlighted the problems faced in dealing with the parasitic disease kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis), which is estimated to have killed some 100,000 people in western Upper Nile (Wahdah/Unity State) - at least one third of the population in the area - during an epidemic in the late 1980s.
Kala azar is a parasitic disease spread by the bite of the sandfly, which affects the immune system and is fatal in 95 percent of cases if left untreated. A series of 30 daily injections cures the disease in 90 percent of cases and confers immunity for the rest of the patient's life, the report said.
MSF currently offers kala azar treatment in three centres in western Upper Nile, including the government-held town of Bentiu, and the nearby village of Nimne.
In February, MSF was forced to evacuate and suspend its programme in Nimne, due to a ground attack and aerial bombardment. "In the first 10 days of February, Nimne was first looted by ground troops and then bombed by Antonov aircraft," MSF said. "The kala azar patients and the rest of the population fled the attacks. Thus far they have not returned." 
Since setting up the Nimne centre in December 2000, MSF had treated 1,206 kala azar patients. At the time of the attacks, 107 people were undergoing treatment for the disease in Nimne, MSF said.
An MSF health clinic at the village of Bieh, also western Upper Nile, had also suffered disruption after a government helicopter gunship attacked during a relief food distribution in February, killing at least 24 people. 
"The needs are massive, but there is virtually no humanitarian presence in the area, and attacks on health workers and facilities deprive patients of any care," Hehenkamp said.
MSF added that these two incidents were just the most publicised attacks to have occurred in recent months, and that they represented "only a fraction" of the consequences of the conflict for the civilians of western Upper Nile.
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan Gerhart Baum, international human rights groups and aid agencies have all voiced concern that the struggle to control oil-rich areas in southern Sudan is exacerbating the civil war.
The International Crisis Group reported earlier this month that the recent escalation in fighting around Sudan's oilfields and increasing use of government helicopter gunships against military and civilian targets - as well as indecision surrounding the nature of international involvement in the peace process - were putting at risk "Sudan's best chance for peace" since 1983.
As a result of both government and rebel attacks, many health workers had fled the region, while others had found work in government-held areas such as Bentiu, or in Khartoum. "However, for the civilians remaining in western Upper Nile this is scant comfort, as most communities are bereft of trained health staff and access to essential medicines," the report said. 
MSF urged the government of Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, and associated militia groups to provide protection to medical personnel and medical facilities "in accordance with humanitarian law".
"Health services are essential for the survival of the civilian population, and must be protected," MSF said.

Uganda and Sudan have agreed to re-establish full diplomatic ties, which were severed in 1995 as each country accused the other of backing rebel groups, and to appoint full ambassadors to each other's countries, according to a joint government statement on Saturday.
Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo and Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il agreed in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, on Friday to "upgrade the level of diplomatic representation between their countries to the level of ambassadors, and to establish a joint ministerial committee" to supervise bilateral relations, the joint communique stated.
The Ugandan government agreed, according to Saturday's joint declaration in Kampala, "to expedite and maximise the Ugandan factor in the realisation of a sustainable peace in southern Sudan under the umbrella of IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development]." 
Sudan and Uganda also agreed to continue to work towards peace and economic development within the IGAD member-states (comprising Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, as well as Sudan and Uganda), and to look for an appropriate mechanism to do so, it added.
Since October 2001, President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya - chairman of the IGAD sub-committee on peace in Sudan - has limited the participation of other IGAD countries in the process, and Uganda has not objected, apparently out of deference to Moi, according to a close observer of the peace process.
In Saturday's statement, Khartoum and Kampala also announced their agreement "to extend their cooperation and coordinate with each other in the multilateral sphere, and to discuss in advance their respective positions with each other, in case of difference, before taking any action." 
This meant that the two countries had effectively "buried the hatchet" over differences that emerged following Uganda's decision to back a recent UN Human Rights Commission resolution urging Sudan to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Kenya, told IRIN on Monday.
Uganda was the only African country to vote in favour of the 19 April resolution (adopted by a vote of 25 in favour and 24 opposed, with four abstentions), which expressed concern over human rights abuses in Sudan, including the use of children as soldiers, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, and summary and arbitrary executions. 
"That issue has been completely sorted out. We really have buried the hatchet," Dirdiery said. "It was made very clear in the communiqué we issued that the two countries will coordinate and cooperate on multilateral affairs. This means we have revised the earlier position," he added.
Khartoum had earlier requested an explanation from Uganda of its vote, especially bearing in mind that Sudan was "helping them fight terrorism in their own country" by allowing the Ugandan army battle the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) inside Sudan. 
Although the LRA was an outgrowth of the "spiritualist" movement of Alice Lakwena which emerged in northern Uganda in the mid-1980s, by 1995 it began operating from Sudan with the support of the government there as Khartoum sought to get back at Uganda for its support of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), according to observers. 
Conditions began to change in the wake of the 11 September 2001 events, the Washington-led international coalition against terrorism and Washington's classification of the LRA as a terrorist organisation. This, in turn, was instrumental in the government of Sudan ending its support of the organisation, diplomatic sources told IRIN.
Dirdiery said on Monday that the restoration of ambassador-level diplomatic ties between Uganda and Sudan (envoys having been exchanged in July 2001) would not only improve cooperation between the two countries but was also a major boost to regional peace efforts. 
"In the past, we had many problems in the region, but both countries have understood that they have to approach all their problems openly, and also in a global fashion," he added. 
Dirdiery said an improvement in diplomatic relations would greatly enhance the countries' cooperation on dealing with the LRA and the SPLA, but that Khartoum would "not necessarily" exert pressure on Uganda to reciprocate on the SPLM/A issue in the same fashion as it had allowed Kampala deal with the LRA.
"We are dealing with the LRA issue in the manner which both countries have deemed fit. We are also determined to approach the SPLA issue, but we can't deal with the SPLA issue in the same way we have done with LRA," he said.
Sudan is urging Kampala to pressure the SPLA to accept a comprehensive ceasefire, something to which the rebels are opposed without a comprehensive political settlement, according to regional observers. 
Donor countries, notably the US, are also emphasising heavily the need for an expansion to other areas of Sudan of the present, locally agreed and renewable ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan, they said. 
Ugandan-Sudanese relations have improved significantly in recent months, especially after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir for the first time in years at a summit in Khartoum in January.
Now, although no "special relationship" or significant neighbourly friendship is expected between the two countries in the near future, the time may be ripe for modest improvements as Sudan and Uganda learn to live with each other, and to make necessary, but minor, adjustments, according to regional analysts.

Uganda's recent vote in favour of a UN resolution expressing concern over the human rights situation in neighbouring Sudan, will have little effect on the good relations currently enjoyed by the two countries, government officials in Kampala have said. 
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 19 April narrowly adopted a resolution expressing concern over human rights abuses in Sudan, including the use of children as soldiers, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, and summary and arbitrary executions. Uganda was the only African country to vote in favour of the resolution, adopted by a vote of 25 in favour and 24 opposed, with four abstentions.
Shaban Bantariza, the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) Director of Information and Public Relations, told IRIN on Friday that Uganda's vote in favour had not affected an agreement signed between Kampala and the Sudanese government in March, empowering the Ugandan army to attack the bases of the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan. 
"For us, our bilateral defence agreement was not affected by the UN vote. It [the vote] happened at another level of intergovernmental interaction," Bantariza said. "The politicians on both sides have been kind enough to allow the military to continue with their operations," he added.
Muhammad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IRIN on Monday that Khartoum had requested an explanation from Uganda for its vote on the resolution. "We have approached Uganda and requested an explanation, bearing in mind we are helping them fight terrorism in their own country," he said. 
A Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman told IRIN on Friday that Uganda had been "very consistent" in its stand on the human rights situation in southern Sudan. "There is nothing like a quarrel between Uganda and Sudan. It is only in that particular issue that our positions were not quite in unison," the spokesman said. 
"We shouldn't confuse the Uganda-Sudan bilateral relations with specific issues like human rights. Uganda has been consistent on the issue of human rights, and it is in this context that we voted the way we voted. Our position has always been there. This is nothing new,"  he added.
The spokesman, who declined to be named, said the vote had not affected bilateral relations, which had significantly improved in recent months, adding that the Sudanese foreign minister was currently in Kampala, leading a delegation from Khartoum to discuss matters of interest to both countries with Ugandan authorities.
Sudan and Uganda severed diplomatic relations in 1995, with both countries accusing each other of  backing the other's rebel groups. Uganda accused Khartoum supporting the LRA, while and Sudan claimed Kampala was assisting the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army.
Bantariza confirmed the extension of the expiry date of "Operation Iron Fist", as the Ugandan army's anti-LRA offensive in Sudan has been dubbed, by a month from the initial deadline of 18 April. The new expiration date was still subject to a ministerial meetings, which would eventually decide when to terminate the operation, depending on the situation on the ground, he said. 
"I know it was signed but I have no details," The New Vision government-owned newspaper quoted Muhammad Siraj al-Din, the Sudanese charge d'affaires in Kampala, as saying on Wednesday. 
Meanwhile, the recent return to Uganda of some 1,300 former rebels of the Uganda National Rescue Front-II (UNRF-II), who have been sheltered in Sudan, has also been seen in the context of improved diplomatic relations between the two countries. 
The Ugandan media reported this week that the former UNRF-II fighters and their leader, Ali Bamuze, said they had renounced rebellion and returned their weapons on arrival from Sudan, where they had been living in exile.
According to Bantariza, the ex-soldiers from former President Idi Amin's government, which was overthrown in 1979, subsequently fought President Yoweri Museveni's government, but were eventually "flushed out" of Uganda in 1997. The group was allowed back into Uganda under the provisions of a presidential amnesty, for those who renounce rebellion, according to Bantariza. 
Bantariza said some of them who were still in "good shape" would be integrated into the army. "We cannot do a wholesale integration into the army. Only some who are capable. A number of them are quite old, which makes them not good soldiers," he said.

Sudan announced a "new era" in relations with Ethiopia on Thursday and said it wanted to improve ties with all its neighbours.
Speaking at the end of a four-day official visit to Ethiopia, Sudanese First Vice President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha said that closer relations would be "conducive" to all countries in the Horn of Africa. He said both countries had reached a "common understanding" on many issues.
"The main message of my visit to Addis Ababa this time is to make very clear with my brothers in the leadership of Ethiopia that our relations have entered a new era," he told journalists. "This new era between the two countries is full of positive accomplishments and is well defined."
"And these positive results that we are looking for aim for the betterment of the two peoples in the two countries," he added. He also said both countries hoped to see "durable peace and stability" in Somalia. 
Taha said he hoped his country could improve relations with Eritrea. Sudan accuses Eritrea of harbouring Sudanese rebels who use the country as a safe haven and launch guerrilla attacks, charges which Asmara has denied.
"Out of the experience we have, our policy is to normalise our relations with all our neighbours, including Eritrea, but it is true there might be some problems here and there," he said. "But we are very keen to have normal relations with Eritrea and we are working in this respect."
He also said Ethiopia's demands for the extradition of Sudanese terrorists linked to the 1995 assassination attempt on the Egyptian president in Addis Ababa would not be a stumbling block to better relations. "We have agreed to close all the files and open a new chapter in the relations between the two countries so whatever had been in the past is history," he said.
Both countries have signed a preferential trade agreement which will help businessmen in Sudan and Ethiopia, Taha noted. "Sudan and Ethiopia have concluded agreements in various fields - in the fields of economy, commerce, the building of infrastructure, roads, telecommunications and others," he said. 
"At the end of the day there will be a financial benefit. It is a continuous process and we are just starting." Taha said other countries in the Horn and elsewhere in Africa should follow their "exemplary" example of collaboration.

Senior United Nations humanitarian officials today called on both parties to the conflict in Sudan to lift all flight bans and to grant full access to people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
"We are appealing to both sides to give us access so we can get food and non-food items to people who need it," Ambassador Tom Vraalsen, the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs for Sudan, told reporters in New York today.
The Sudanese government has denied access to more than 40 locations since late March, double the usual number of denials, effectively cutting off humanitarian supply lines into parts of Eastern Equatoria, Bahr El Gazal, and Western Upper Nile, according to a statement issued by the UN's Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA).
Over a million people dependant on relief assistance for survival are affected, the statement said.
The Sudanese Peoples' Liberation Movement (SPLM), for their part, has restricted flights to the city of Wau in South-East Sudan, according to ECHA.
"We cannot allow a repeat of the 1998 famine, when a combination of dry season fighting and denials of humanitarian access brought about massive starvation," United Nations Emergency Relief Co-coordinator Kenzo Oshima said. "We need access, and we need it now."
The lack of humanitarian access coincides with the end of the dry season, a time when aid agencies seek to increase their shipments of relief supplies in preparation for the rainy season, which renders many roads impassable.

The United States announced on Tuesday that it would send a landmine-clearance team to the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan, where a ceasefire between the government and southern rebels is currently in operation. 
"The Quick Reaction Demining Force's mine-clearance operations will lessen the likelihood of additional casualties, as refugees and internally displaced persons begin relocation into areas where mines are known to exist", a statement form the US State Department said. An advance party had already left for Sudan on 19 April, and the main deployment, comprising two squads of 10 persons each, were expected to arrive in approximately two weeks, the statement said. 
Between 1989 and 2001, 1,135 persons had become victims of landmines in the Nuba Mountains, the statement quoted the Sudanese government as saying.
An agreement to implement a ceasefire in the 80,000-sq km Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan was signed by representatives of the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in Burgenstock, Switzerland, on 19 January. 
"The mine-clearance operations will contribute to the success of the first phase of the recently concluded ceasefire between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army", the US statement said.
Unimpeded movement in the Nuba Mountains - important for the Nuba economy - was restricted by the poor state of roads in the region, many of which were "afflicted" with landmines, a UN-led multi-agency assessment mission to the Nuba Mountains reported in February. 
"Road traffic was obliged to use a network of rough dirt and sand tracks running through the plains areas and the mountains, with the latter being now virtually impassable to traffic because of the civil war and the existence of landmines," the office of the UN Coordinator for Sudan stated in a report on the rapid-needs assessment, conducted over a three-week period in January.
According to considered estimates, there are between 500,000 and two million landmines in Sudan, laid by both the government and rebel groups. The government of Sudan, as cited by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, estimates that mine accidents have resulted in more than 700,000 deaths and an equal number of amputees. 
The Sudanese government has signed, but not yet ratified, the Ottawa Treaty against landmine use, while in October 2001 the SPLM/A signed an agreement on a total ban on antipersonnel landmines throughout territories under its control.
The European Commission in March committed 1.5 million euros (some US $1.3 million) to a nationwide mine-clearance programme, to be implemented by nongovernmental organisations in both government-controlled and rebel-held parts of the country. Sources in Khartoum told IRIN in March  that programme activities would initially be concentrated in the Nuba Mountains region.
The US-sponsored Quick Reaction Force's mission in Sudan would be implemented by the RONCO Consulting Corporation, a Washington-based commercial demining company, the US State Department said.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on Friday narrowly adopted a resolution expressing deep concern over the human rights situation in Sudan.
The resolution - adopted by a vote of 25 in favour and 24 opposed, with four abstentions - expressed deep concern at the negative role of undisciplined militias armed by the Sudanese government and of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the use of children as soldiers, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, and summary and arbitrary executions.
The Sudanese representative said Sudan had made progress in human rights, as well as the economic, political and social fields, and the resolution would only strengthen those who were opposed to the peace process. 
"The slight margin is an indication that the issue is a political issue and [has] nothing to do with human rights, with Europe and developed countries on one side and African countries on the other," Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IRIN on Monday.
Uganda was the only African country to vote in favour of the resolution, saying that although it was committed to strengthening relations with Sudan, it was concerned about the grave human rights situation in southern Sudan.
Dirdiery told IRIN that Khartoum had requested an explanation from Uganda for its vote on the resolution. "We have approached Uganda and requested an explanation, bearing in mind we are helping them fight terrorism in their own country," he said.
The United States government in December added the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to its "Terrorist Exclusion List", designed to protect the safety of the US and its citizens.
Improving diplomatic relations between Uganda and Sudan over the past several months have facilitated a Ugandan army offensive against LRA inside southern Sudan. 
The two countries severed diplomatic ties in 1995, with Uganda accusing Khartoum of providing support to the LRA, and Sudan claiming that Kampala was assisting the  SPLM/A.
The Commission welcomed recent positive moves made towards peace in Sudan, including: a cease-fire agreement covering the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan, and the establishment of a Joint Military Commission and International Monitoring Unit to monitor the cease-fire; an agreement to protect civilians from military attack; and commitments by both the government and the SPLM/A to support an international commission to investigate allegations of slavery and abductions. 
The commission also expressed its deep concern at the extension of a state of emergency in the country, originally declared in December 1999 and renewed for the second time in December 2001 to last until the end of 2002. 
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in February said special "emergency tribunals" set up in 2001 under the state of emergency were being used to impose inhumane sentences such as death by stoning and amputations. HRW cited the cases of six men in the western states of Northern Darfur and Southern Darfur, who had been sentenced to limb amputations since December 2001 for crimes such as robbery and illegal possession of weapons. 
The UN resolution also noted with concern the continuing problem of abductions of women and children by government militia and their alleged subjection to forced labour. 
UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan Gerhart Baum in April highlighted the negative role of government-sponsored militias in abductions, and expressed concern over the slow progress achieved by the Sudanese government's Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEACW).
A US-sponsored international team of experts investigating abductions ended its first fact-finding mission, saying both the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A had cooperated with the mission, AP reported on Friday. "Access and participation by the Sudanese government and opposition leaders has thus far been positive," AP quoted Penn Kemble, head of the delegation, as saying.
The eight-person delegation, made up of members from the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, and France, had visited rebel-held and government-controlled areas from 8 April to 18 April to investigate allegations of slavery and abductions, according to Reuters.
The Commission said it had decided to extend the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan for a further year.

Thousands of people displaced by insecurity prompted by a joint Ugandan-Sudanese military operation against the (Ugandan) rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, have arrived in the government stronghold of Juba, according to aid officials. 
In the face of the joint offensive in the past fortnight, some 7,000 LRA rebels have fled their four main camps on the eastern bank of the White Nile, in southern Sudan, and dispersed in several groups, according to the Guardian newspaper in Britain. It cited intelligence sources as saying LRA groups were besieged by the Sudanese army southeast of Juba, and by the Ugandan army further east, near Mogiri and Magwe.
The LRA have recently been attacking villages near Juba, with thousands of villagers fleeing to camps near Juba and saying their homes had been looted and burnt, according to sources in Sudan. The rebel group appeared to be angry with Sudan for cooperating with the Ugandan army and was attacking government-controlled villages in retaliation, they said.
Elements of the LRA were in the mountains behind Laboni, in a remote area of Eastern Equatoria near the Sudan-Uganda border, and the Ugandan army was frequently passing through the area though there was currently no military activity, the Roman Catholic nongovernmental organisation Jesuit Refugee Services reported on Wednesday.
LRA rebels hiding near Magwe, thought to number several thousand fighters and their families, included the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, the Guardian reported on 13 April, adding that the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) feared a massacre as Sudanese and Ugandan troops prepared for an all-out assault on the cultish army. 
UNICEF was finding it impossible to gain access to them and was growing desperate about the fate of child soldiers among them (many of whom were abducted by the insurgents), it said. 
"These are indoctrinated children who believe they have to fight to the death; neither Ugandan nor Sudanese soldiers are likely to feel too sorry for them," it quoted Nils Kastburg, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes, as saying.
"We've got desperate parents in Uganda wanting their children back and meanwhile they're fighting to the death in Sudan," Kastburg said. "We are extremely frustrated not to be making more headway." 
The Ugandan and Sudanese governments said that, in cooperating to tackle the common security threat posed by the LRA, they would "spare no efforts to safeguard and maintain the safety of innocent civilians", and would seek the safe repatriation of abducted children.
[see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27052]
UNICEF has repeatedly expressed concern over the fate of thousands of children abducted by the LRA, saying that those abandoned "must be found and protected" and those others caught up in the fighting must be treated as children. 
Executive Director Carol Bellamy emphasised early this month that Uganda had made clear its military campaign in southern Sudan was designed to secure the release of thousands of abducted children even as it destroyed the LRA, but that the agency had "yet to see any evidence that the children are being rescued".
"We need to find out where these children are and then do everything possible to ensure their protection and, ultimately, reunification with their families," Bellamy added.
However, the Ugandan army Director for Information and Public Relations, Shaban Bantariza, said it would be difficult for it to guarantee their safety, because most of them had become highly militarised and were combatants.
Meanwhile, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments have extended their agreement allowing the Ugandan army to pursue the LRA inside Sudan, according to Radio Uganda. The campaign had been due to expire on Thursday, 18 April, but was extended this week to allow the operation to continue, it reported on Thursday, but without indicating the new deadline.

Serious military engagements are occurring between government of Sudan forces and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in western Upper Nile (or Unity/Wahdah State) and northern Bahr al-Ghazal, in the south of the country, according to humanitarian sources.
The government recently lost control of Koch and was coming back with significant reinforcements, who had been stationed to defend the oil area around Bentiu in order to retake it, one aid worker told IRIN on Thursday.
The SPLA on Thursday accused government forces of having bombarded villages in western Upper Nile, especially around Koch, Bieh and Rier, over the previous three days, in contravention of a recent undertaking it gave the USA on protecting civilians and civilian infrastructure in the course of the civil war.
In a statement released in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the SPLA spokesman, Samson Kwaje, said the Sudanese army had meted out "unwarranted destruction" in western Upper Nile, where, he said, "the war is raging". 
Kwaje said that intense fighting had resulted in a high number of casualties on both sides, the Associated Press agency (AP) reported. The SPLA statement said more details would be released soon.
The SPLA has said fighting in the area began in February when the government tried to force residents and the rebel movement from the area in order to secure it for oil production. 
On Thursday, it deplored the alleged forcible displacement of the indigenous population from the villages of Wang Kai and Rier "to make these areas safe for the foreign multinational oil companies to operate".
The Swedish oil company Lundin has an oil concession in the area, but in January announced "a temporary suspension of seismic and drilling operations on Block 5A... as a precautionary measure to ensure maximum security for its personnel and operation".
This decision did not affect the company's long-term plans to develop the Thar Jath field and further explore the southern Muglad basin, and the company hoped a cease-fire agreement reached between the government and SPLA for the Nuba Mountains in January would be extended to all areas of Sudan and allow an early resumption of its activities in Block 5A.
[see http://www.lundin-petroleum.com/eng/index.shtml]
The Greater Nile Oil Project, an international oil consortium which includes the Canadian company Talisman, is producing some 230,000 barrels of oil per day in the western Upper Nile field at Hajlij, near the town of Bentiu, less than 100 km north of the villages the SPLA accuses the government of bombing, AP reported on Thursday.
Talisman says it has extensive community development programmes and "believes its continued presence benefits all the people of Sudan".
[see http://www.talisman-energy.com/] 
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan Gerhart Baum, international human rights groups and aid agencies have all voiced concern that the struggle to control oil-rich areas and revenues in southern Sudan is exacerbating the civil war.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) reported earlier this month that the recent escalation in fighting around Sudan's oilfields and increasing use of government helicopter gunships against military and civilian targets - as well as indecision surrounding the nature of international involvement in the peace process - were putting at risk "Sudan's best chance for peace" since 1983.
Although the US- and Swiss-brokered cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, had alleviated the suffering of the Nuba people, it had allowed the warring parties to divert their forces to the oilfields in western Upper Nile, it added.
The rebels have called for a halt to oil production until peace can be achieved, and said that meanwhile oil operations are "a legitimate target", because they provide the Khartoum government with revenues with which to pursue the war.
The Sudanese government insists that the agreement to protect civilians and civilian targets in the war should render oilfields free from attack. 
There is also serious fighting between government troops and the SPLA in northern Bahr al-Ghazal, especially around the government garrison town of Wau, aid workers told IRIN on Thursday. Wau is considered a major strategic target for the SPLA, but is very well fortified and would not easily be taken by the rebel force, according to observers. 
State Minister at the Peace Advisory Dhiou Matok said Khartoum intended to deliver a complaint to the US - sponsor of the agreement on avoiding civilian targets - at the SPLA's alleged violation of the agreement by shelling Wau, the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported last weekend.
The government has also accused the rebel movement and "some unscrupulous agencies" of violating the Nuba Mountains cease-fire agreement by entering restricted areas, specifically Miri, according to the Sudanese media.
The SPLA, in turn, has alleged government violations of the Nuba cease-fire, Kwaje saying on Thursday that Khartoum kept doing so "with impunity".

A good measure of success has been achieved in ongoing efforts to eradicate polio in southern Sudan, the scene of ongoing fierce fighting between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), according to Carl Tintsman, a senior adviser to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO). 
Yet "tremendous challenges" of access to children must still be overcome if southern Sudan was to achieve the WHO goal of being polio free by the end of 2002, he added.
Tintsman, an adviser at the headquarters of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Geneva, Switzerland, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Tuesday that the warring parties in Sudan had agreed to periods of tranquillity in a number of areas of conflict in order to allow immunisation programmes to be carried out.
"We have managed to negotiate for days of tranquillity during immunisation days, and we hope both sides will respect their commitments," he said. "We hope to finish [this year's immunisation round] in the next four months."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) had requested the government of Sudan and SPLA for cease-fire days on the first Monday to Thursday of each month in order to allow aid workers broad and secure access to children for immunisation.
Increased humanitarian space for immunisation efforts, among other activities, was also one of four proposals on which US peace envoy John Danforth won concessions from the warring parties in Sudan.
Emergency access had previously been secured on a case-by-case basis for assessments and polio immunisation efforts in particular areas, but the campaign had been hindered by the inability to negotiate free access with the combatants, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported in October 2001.
It was vital for relief efforts in critical areas of southern Sudan that aid agencies benefit from "an extension of the humanitarian space" and were allowed to operate with minimal security guarantees, he concluded.
"There is an ever-present danger of an outbreak," the UNICEF spokesman for southern Sudan, Martin Dawes, told IRIN earlier this month. "We need these days of tranquillity for health workers to go about their work."
National Immunisation Days (NIDs) are scheduled - though not finalised - for Bahr al-Ghazal, Lakes (Al-Buhayrat) region, Upper Nile, Jonglei, Eastern Equatoria and Western Equatoria this month, with additional, sub-national days planned for October and November, according to WHO.
Tuesday's press conference in Nairobi, which coincided with similar conferences in seven other cities around the world, was held to draw the world's attention to the progress made so far in global polio eradication efforts, and the challenges remaining.
Polio (poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that mainly affects children under five years of age. The disease invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis within hours. Among the victims of the disease - which has no cure but can be prevented through immunisation - between 5 and 10 percent die when their breathing muscles are paralysed. 
Only 537 polio cases were reported globally last year in 10 countries, compared with 350,000 cases reported in 1998 when the global polio eradication initiative began. This means that the disease has been pushed to its lowest level in history, according to Urban Jonsson, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
In Sudan, currently listed among five low polio transmission countries in Africa, there has been continued progress in reducing clinical cases of polio from 23 in 2000 to only one case of wild polio virus confirmed in July last year (in western Upper Nile/Unity State, southern Sudan), according to a joint statement released on Tuesday by the four major agencies involved in the global polio eradication initiative: WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International and the US Center for Disease Control (CDC).
This positive trend has been attributed to intense supplemental immunisation activities in Sudan, in which at least five NIDs campaigns have been conducted, as well as additional mopping-up in August 2001 in districts around Ruweng County, where the wild polio virus was isolated. [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=9979]
"The one case last year only occurred in a gap area which could not be reached by NGOs from Khartoum or OLS [Operation Lifeline Sudan, a group of UN agencies and NGOs which run humanitarian relief operations in southern Sudan] because it is an area of conflict," Jonsson said on Tuesday. 
An initial goal to eradicate polio in the WHO's eastern Mediterranean region by the year 2000 was not met in Sudan, largely because the campaign began late - in 1998, compared with other countries where programmes had been in place since the 1980s - but also because of severe challenges on accessing children, Jeff Partridge, WHO's Polio Technical Officer for Sudan, told IRIN on Thursday.
In early April, a group of UN agencies condemned the detention and harassment of some 14 health workers in southern Sudan by SPLA soldiers, and urged the warring parties to allow unhindered access and observe "days of tranquillity" during the next round of NIDs, scheduled for 13-26 April. 
UNOCHA, UNICEF and WHO warned, in a statement released in New York on 1 April, that the global polio eradication target of 2005 would not be reached unless access and safe passage for health workers could be guaranteed in countries in conflict, such as Sudan.
The 14 health workers had been conducting vaccination activities when they were arrested in Nyingol, near Malakal town, Upper Nile, on 15 March by members of the SPLA, according to the statement. 
Southern Sudan remains one of the challenging areas the initiative faces in its efforts to eradicate polio worldwide, and routine polio immunisation services offered by NGOs have been very limited - largely as a result of insecurity and inadequate access, according to humanitarian sources.
For example, OLS figures for 2001 indicate that only 4,985 out of 1.3 million children under five in southern Sudan received the first round of four routine doses of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Those children who received their second, third and fourth rounds of the OPV numbered 36,722, 26,414, and 17,736 respectively, according to an OLS chart released on Tuesday. 
Individual children require at least four doses of the oral polio vaccine but the approach used under the global polio eradication campaign targets all children under five years, regardless of whether they have previously received their four vaccination doses, according to Partridge.
"In terms of public health initiatives and the eradication process, we use a different methodology. We immunise a child each time. It doesn't matter how many times," he said. 
The low level of routine vaccination - particularly in southern Sudan - is attributable to the absence of a comprehensive immunisation programme covering the region, outside the global polio campaign, according to Partridge. 
"The routine programme is a big challenge to us," he told IRIN on Thursday. "Routine immunisation is carried out in southern Sudan in an ad hoc basis, depending on the NGOs on the ground."
"The NGOs have different mandates, limiting their capacities to carry out regular immunisation programmes throughout southern Sudan. We are doing extra rounds in the region to stop the virus transmission," he added.
"The good news is that the world is on track in achieving polio eradication by 2005," Jonsson said on Tuesday, but eradication efforts were being challenged by a current funding gap of $275 million - as well as by difficulties in gaining access to children, particularly in conflict-torn countries like Sudan.

About 12,200 people have returned from northern Sudan to Twic County, Northern Bahr al-Ghazal, since December 2001, largely because of falling incomes in northern towns and farms, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
A WFP rapid monitoring assessment conducted in Twic County from 11 to 17 March found that about two-thirds of the returnees were expected to set up new households and would therefore need food support through to the next harvest, WFP said in its latest southern sector update.
Most of the returnees had fled Bahr al-Ghazal between 1993 and 1998 because of insecurity and the famine of 1998, the report stated.
Although WFP reported no major security incidents in the regions of Upper Nile and Jonglei where WFP teams conducted food aid interventions, fighting around the oilfields of western Upper Nile (Wahdah State) meant that only "hit and run" interventions could be made in several places. 
A government of Sudan helicopter gunship attack during a WFP relief good distribution at the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile, in February led to the deaths of at least 24 people, and was widely condemned by governments and aid agencies.
The government's denial of humanitarian flight access for March to Bieh, Buoth, Kuey and Koch in western Upper Nile, as well additional locations in Bieh State, Phou State and Ruweng County, meant that planned food aid interventions to some 57,000 people in this highly food-insecure area could not be carried out, WFP said. 
Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the umbrella operation for UN and nongovernmental agencies working in Sudan, each month submits a request to the Sudanese government for humanitarian access to a number of locations in war-torn southern Sudan.
The Sudanese government at the start of March increased the number of flight-denied locations in southern Sudan from 26 to over 40. In April, Khartoum placed 43 locations on its list of locations to which aid agencies would be denied flight access.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima at the time condemned the move, and urged the government of Sudan to rescind its decision. The imposition of flight denials would have serious repercussions on the entire populations of Upper Nile, Bahr al-Ghazal and Lakes regions, the UN said.
In Upper Nile and Jonglei states, 67 percent of planned food deliveries had been made during the reporting period, the shortfall arising due to insecurity, government of Sudan flight denials and low airdrop capacity, the WFP report said. Over 150,000 people in those states had been served with 913 mt of food aid, it added. 
In Lakes (Al-Buhayrat) State, an inter-agency assessment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) carried out in Tonj County estimated that about 2,300 households had arrived in the county, having fled helicopter gunship and ground attacks and aerial bombardments from areas around the oilfields in western Upper Nile, WFP said. Most of the IDPs were living in lowland areas along rivers and so could not be easily reached, it added. 
In Eastern Equatoria there had also been concerns during March that insecurity arising from an escalation in fighting between the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan army could spill over into eastern Torit County, where WFP had intervention activities. Because of insecurity in parts of Torit County, WFP had been unable to conduct the annual needs assessment in the area, and some medical services provided by Catholic Relief Services had been withdrawn, the report said. 
Throughout the Lakes and Equatoria regions, 583 mt of food aid was delivered to over 86,000 people, WFP said.
Across southern Sudan, a total of 3,097 mt of food aid was distributed to 225,254 people in March, representing 67 percent of the tonnage planned for the month, the WFP update stated.

Increased commitment to addressing the long-running Sudanese conflict is encouraging but the humanitarian crisis affecting most people in the south of the country remains intolerable, according to a report released on Friday by a group of nongovernmental organisations active in the country. 
Compiled jointly by CARE International, Tearfund, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save the Children, it argues that the vast majority of Sudanese people are exhausted by the civil war and disappointed by the lack of progress towards a broad peace - notwithstanding gains in implementing four confidence-building measures proposed by US peace envoy John Danforth.
"This is a critical time for all concerned governments, agencies and warring parties to work in concert to bring about a just and sustainable peace in Sudan," according to the report, entitled The Key to Peace: Unlocking the human potential of Sudan. 
"The war has exacted a terrible and poorly communicated human cost, and it must end - now," the report added.
In it, the NGOs revealed the human cost of the Sudanese conflict and outlined measures needed to curb the humanitarian crisis while also steering the country towards long-term development and investment.
Its launch on Friday (12 April) coincided with the end of a fact-finding mission to Sudan by four British MPs, who urged the international community to exert pressure on the warring parties to make commitments to ending the civil war, which has lasted 19 years in its latest phase. [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27266]
The civil war in Sudan has directly resulted in the deaths of at least two million people and caused the largest displacement of people in Africa, estimated at four million, according to the report. It has also eroded health, education and other vital services throughout the country - but especially in the south, it stated. 
Moreover, the agencies said, the war had heightened people's vulnerability to famine, eroded their already fragile coping strategies and destroyed vital assets and livelihoods, such that an estimated 92 percent of Sudanese were living below the poverty line.
"Warring parties have targeted civilians, uncontrolled militia groups wreak destruction on property and livelihoods, exacting a terrible human cost," the report stated. "The activities of unaccountable paramilitaries appear to continue unabated. Militia attack, rape and abduct civilians, creating fear, distress and increased displacement. Large areas of southern Sudan, especially Bahr al-Ghazal, have been devastated by militia activity."
However, the NGOs welcomed the renewed international interest in the Sudanese conflict following Danforth's appointment in September 2001, and subsequent contributions towards the aim of ending the war - notably from Britain, which had also appointed a peace envoy; Norway, which had contributed monitors to oversee a US- and Swiss-brokered ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region; and the Kenyan government, which had named a special envoy to support regional peace efforts.
"The Sudanese people are also finding new ways to build bridges between communities, and have engaged in local reconciliation efforts that are bringing real dividends," they said.
There was vast potential for development in Sudan, according to the report. If encouraged by a durable peace, it could allow for the revival of the country's economy and make funds available for poverty eradication, and for other vital sectors such as education and health, it stated.
The report outlined ways by which Sudan's vast natural resources could be exploited in the interests of its people, urging donors to establish "more sustained" programmes while "simultaneously expanding the space for confidence building and conflict transformation". 
"Donors are encouraged to ensure more 'joined-up' cross-government approaches to relief, rehabilitation and development based on a comprehensive analysis of the central issues facing Sudan," the report said.
"We urge donors now to review their earlier policies and engage with existing opportunities," it added.

The US-led eminent persons group on slavery, abduction and forced servitude in Sudan expects to have developed some practical ideas on what can be done about these impediments to ending the country's civil war by late May, the US Department of State reported on Friday.
The establishment of the group in late March was a follow-up to US peace envoy John Danforth's proposition to the warring parties of four confidence-building measures in November 2001. In these he included an end to the taking of slaves and abduction of civilians.
[see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15561] 
"Of course, the government of Sudan does not accept the characterisation that slavery does exist in Sudan, but it does acknowledge there are abductions and forced servitude," the State Department on Friday quoted the mission leader, Penn Kemble, as saying before his departure on the 10-day trip to Sudan on 8 April.
Kemble, senior scholar at the US-based human rights organisation Freedom House, is leading the eight-member team to explore the issue, following an agreement by the Sudanese government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) with Danforth in December.
In addition to Kemble and another American, George Moose, a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, the team includes members from Britain, Italy, France and Norway. 
"If there is some prospect of resolving the range of issues and helping the Sudanese achieve a just peace, this [mission] could be something of tremendous value and contribute to the normalisation of the situation elsewhere in the region," the State Department on Friday quoted Kemble as saying.
[see http://usinfo.state.gov/products/washfile/]
The group has been asked to "recommend steps that can be taken by the parties to the conflict, and the international community, to end such abuses", according to the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher.
While recognising that some positive steps had been taken with respect to abductions (notably the establishment of the government-supported Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children), UN Special Rapporteur of the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan Gerhart Baum reported in November that "there continues to be a need for a massive advocacy campaign" and a strong government stand on the issue.
[for related stories, go to http://www.irinnews.org] 
Baum referred particularly in a report in November 2001 to the negative role of nomadic Arab tribes (mainly the Baqqarah, Zaghawah and Misariyyah) from which government formed murahilin (nomadic) militias, and which, he said, were deeply implicated in abductions and the targeting of civilians in war. 
"The government needs to exercise all its influence on the murahilin, who are responsible for human rights abuses, such as mass killings, torture, rape and abductions." The authorities in Khartoum shared responsibility, Baum said, because the Sudanese army tolerated these abuses, integrated the murahilin in its military campaigns and, in part, financed them.
Baum's report also referred to information he had received that forcible recruitment by the SPLA was continuing, despite an SPLM/A programme for demobilising child soldiers.
The current US-led mission team on slavery, abduction and forced servitude should be ready to report to US Secretary of State Colin Powell after its second trip to northern and southern Sudan (planned for mid-May), according to Kemble. The eight "eminent persons" are currently inside Sudan on their first trip.
"I think the problem of setting up a system that monitors human rights practices and that establishes some accountability with some appropriate authorities is one of the things we'll be looking at," Washington on Friday quoted Kemble as saying.
"It's not our place to set up such a system, but to advise the people there on how it can be done. We have worked in these areas before and we may be able to provide some useful suggestions," he added.

Nairobi, 15 April 2002 (IRIN) - A group of British parliamentarians returning from a fact-finding mission in Sudan on Friday urged the international community to step up "political and economic" pressure to force Sudanese belligerents to make commitments towards ending the country's 19-year civil war. 
The parliamentary group (representing small political parties, pressure groups, religious organisations and Sudanese residing in the United Kingdom) said after completing its mission that members of the international community - notably the United States and British governments, which have recently appointed special envoys for peace in Sudan - needed to find ways of steering the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) back to the negotiating table. 
"The search for peace in Sudan needs to be given a new momentum and addressed with clarity," Hilton Dawson, Labour party MP for Lancaster and Wyre, who headed the delegation, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 12 April, after ending his mission in Sudan. 
While praising the current international efforts aimed at ending the civil war, the MPs told the news conference that the growing number of peace initiatives for Sudan, as they were operating now, were not "necessarily helping the peace process". 
According to Dawson, the Sudanese conflict is in "dire need of honest brokers" through the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative, currently chaired by Kenya, or other international actors with a stake in the conflict.
"There are no clear answers. But international pressure on both sides should be part of the solution to the Sudanese problem. In our report back, we will make it clear that we believe there is need for honest brokers, either through IGAD, the British government, the US or other international actors. They have a big part to play in this process," Dawson added. 
"There is a traffic jam of peace initiatives in Sudan, which have not been necessarily helpful," David Drew, Labour MP for Stround, told the news conference. "They are upsetting the peace process in Sudan. What is needed is for these initiatives to converge and cohere, not undercut each other."
Although the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A have agreed to the so-called "confidence-building measures" recently proposed by the US government's peace envoy to Sudan, Senator John Danforth, the MPs urged both parties and mediation groups to renew their commitment to the Declaration of Principles - a set of operating standards agreed by the government and SPLM/A in the IGAD process - as the point of convergence for different peace processes. 
Besides IGAD's, peace initiatives for Sudan have included an Eritrean effort, a Nigerian initiative, supplementary efforts by the US and European nations, and the Egyptian-Libyan joint initiative, which has been widely deemed to be a separate peace initiative competing with IGAD.
"IGAD needs to be the fundamental building block for peace in Sudan," said Drew. "At the very least, IGAD has put in place the Declaration of Principles, which is the most simple and honest way to move forward."
"We need, as the international community, to go back to IGAD and the Declaration of Principles. All peace initiatives should take both parties to the negotiating table, and follow IGAD principles, to show that they are working towards the same end," he added. 
The concerns of the MPs generally tally with those in a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which hailed the recent progress on the four confidence-building measures proposed by Danforth, raising hopes that an end could soon be brought to the conflict.
However, ICG also warned that the current window of opportunity for peace could be missed if efforts were not made by the international community to revitalise a comprehensive peace process.
"The international community, and in particular the US, must seize this opportunity to revitalise the peace process before the two sides completely re-commit themselves to resolving Africa's longest conflict on the battlefield," ICG said in its April report, entitled "Capturing the Moment: Sudan's Peace Process in the Balance".
Danforth's proposals were first made in November 2001, and have since facilitated a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains in south-central Sudan to allow humanitarian aid to enter the region. They have also brought about the establishment of a commission to investigate allegations of slavery, and Khartoum's agreement to allow times and zones of tranquillity for the implementation of immunisation programmes.
However, a recent escalation in fighting around Sudan's oilfields, increasing use of government helicopter gunships against military and civilian targets in the south, and indecision surrounding the nature of international involvement in the peace process all "put at risk Sudan's best chance for peace" since 1983, when the most recent phase in Sudan's civil war began, according to the ICG report. 
Although Khartoum and the SPLM/A recently signed an agreement to protect civilians and civilian targets in the war, the status of the southern oilfields remains in dispute. While the SPLM/A says oil installations are legitimate targets, Khartoum asserts that the agreement should render them free from attack. 
While in Sudan, the British parliamentary delegation spoke with Sudanese government officials as well as with representative of the leading opposition Umma Party and representatives of the SPLM/A, the Sudanese Al-Ayyam newspaper reported on 8 April. Their talks centred on the civil conflict, and political and constitutional issues affecting the country, according to the paper. 
The delegation's visit was facilitated by a group of international nongovernmental organisations, including CARE International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund and Christian Aid - all engaged in humanitarian operations in southern Sudan.
 

UN protests against humanitarian flight denials

The United Nations system on Friday condemned a decision by the Sudanese government to deny humanitarian flight access to 43 locations in southern Sudan.
In a statement, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima urged the Khartoum government to rescind its decision and "immediately grant access to all the denied locations, to enable international agencies to continue delivery of life-saving supplies to the people of Sudan". 
Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the umbrella operation for UN and nongovernmental organisations operating in Sudan, submits a routine request at the start of each month to the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) for humanitarian flight access to a number of locations in southern Sudan.
On average, Sudanese government authorities denied OLS access to 25 locations in southern Sudan each month, which represented about 10 percent of the requests, the UN said.
At the start of April, however, 43 locations, including the strategic town of Rumbek, Lakes region, were listed as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access, according to relief officials.
Negotiations between UN representatives and government officials had resulted in the removal of Rumbek from the list of denied locations, and in the lifting of the restrictions on general humanitarian access, leaving 42 locations still "flight denied", sources told IRIN on Monday. 
This is the second consecutive month that Khartoum has increased the number of denied locations to almost 20 percent of requests for access, the UN said.
At the beginning of March, Sudanese authorities denied access to over 40 locations, saying the restrictions had been imposed to help the government verify the locations of aid deliveries in southern Sudan.
April's government submission of access denied locations and the one for March differed in several of the locations listed, sources said. 
The imposition of humanitarian flight denials in April could affect the delivery of humanitarian assistance to about 1.7 million people, according to the statement released by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
"These flight bans can have a devastating impact on entire populations," said Judith Lewis, the World Food Programme (WFP) Regional Director for East and Southern Africa. "Extremely debilitated people will be virtually cut off from basic assistance such as food and health care," she said. 
Lack of access was expected to have serious repercussions on the entire populations of Upper Nile, northern Bahr al-Ghazal and Lakes regions, the UN statement said. A number of locations affected by the flight denials in Bahr al-Ghazal were "crucial" for reaching some of the most vulnerable populations, it added.
Although a series of meetings involving government officials and WFP representatives had made some progress in easing the restrictions, the UN food agency said it would not be able to operate adequately without wider access to affected populations in southern Sudan.
Sudanese government authorities were also demanding that all WFP flights entering Sudanese airspace should contact the air control tower in the government-held town of Juba, Eastern Equatoria.
The request was "virtually impossible" to comply with, as aircraft entered Sudanese territory some 150 nautical miles from Juba - too far to establish VHF radio contact with Juba, WFP said. 
WFP said the government of Sudan was imposing "bureaucratic obstacles" on operations by demanding maps and coordinates of the locations to which relief assistance was to be supplied.
"Despite our continuous request to the UN, it has not yet provided details and maps of the regions which it intends to fly to, but to the contrary, flights are carried out to positions unknown to us, exposing humanitarian aid workers and possessions to danger," the head of the Sudanese government's Humanitarian Aid Commission, Sulaf al-Din Salih, was quoted as saying by the Al-Ayyam newspaper on 6 April.
"Indeed, the failure by UN to respond to these requirements may make us withdraw our facilitation to a reasonable level," Sulaf al-Din Salih warned.
The deaths of at least 24 people in a government helicopter gunship attack on a food distribution centre at the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile, in February, was widely condemned by humanitarian agencies, and led to the United States suspending peace discussions with Khartoum.
The Sudanese government and the SPLM/A subsequently signed an agreement to protect civilians in the country's 19-year civil war, and the US has resumed engagement in Sudanese peace efforts. 
"This [decision to deny access] is a violation of the humanitarian principles and the tripartite agreement under which OLS was created in 1989, a commitment subscribed to by the government of Sudan," WFP's Judith Lewis said.

The United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Thursday reiterated its "grave concern" over the fate of thousands of children abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan, especially in light of the reported abandonment of many of them by the rebel group after a major military offensive by the Ugandan army.
"Where are the missing Ugandan children?" the agency asked. "Thousands of children said to be abandoned by LRA rebels must be found and protected," it added. 
A recent agreement signed by the Ugandan and Sudanese governments has given the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) authorisation to sweep through broad swathes of Sudanese territory in pursuit of the LRA. Previously supported by Sudan, in retaliation for Ugandan support for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) battling Khartoum, the LRA has fought Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, from bases in southern Sudan.
LRA leader Joseph Kony had abandoned his "wives" (many of them abductees forced into sexual slavery) and thousands of abducted Ugandan children he had been forcing to fight for him at the Sudanese government-controlled position of Aru [6.32 N 29.52 E], as he fled northwards from a UPDF attack on Lubangatek, according to UPDF spokesman Shaban Bantariza.
"We attacked the rebels on Thursday [28 March] and Kony abandoned his captives. They were in their thousands. We are fighting these rebels alone. The operations are still going on," the German press agency (dpa) quoted Bantariza, Director for Information and Public Relations with the UPDF, as saying.
According to Bantariza, the LRA had handed over "wives" and younger children - most of whom, he said, had been born in captivity - a week before the Ugandan military offensive began because, being unable to fight, they would have proved a burden for the group in the "difficult days ahead".
The children and "wives" now in the hands of the Sudanese government would soon be handed back to the Ugandan government, he added. 
UNICEF said on Thursday it had asked Uganda for clarification regarding its assertion that the LRA had abandoned children, that they were in the hands of the Sudanese government and would eventually be handed over to humanitarian agencies.
So far the UNICEF offices in Uganda and Sudan had received no other indication that children were, in fact, released by the LRA, the agency added. 
"We need to find out where these children are and then do everything possible to ensure their protection and, ultimately, reunification with their families," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in Thursday's statement. 
Bantariza told IRIN on Wednesday that the Ugandan army's military offensive against the LRA and its bases in southern Sudan - was "proceeding smoothly".
"Either way we are happy," he said. "In case LRA runs to other areas, we will go there and get them. The protocol permits that. They [the Sudanese government] gave us no objections to going into areas they control. In any case, we will get assistance from the Sudanese military. They will either arrest them for us, or allow us in." 
The two countries signed a protocol on 10 March under the terms of which Sudan and Uganda agreed to cooperate and coordinate their efforts "to contain the problems caused by the Lord's Resistance Army across the Sudanese-Ugandan borders".
During the operation, which began on 28 March, the UPDF overran five LRA base camps in (Eastern Equatoria) southern Sudan, and by 29 March had captured a cache of arms worth just over US $2 million, according to Bantariza. He said there had been no casualties reported since the operation began.
"There are no casualties yet," he told IRIN. "We found abandoned military materials. We know they only fled with light weapons and are moving towards SPLA territory," he said. The SPLA, which has been fighting the Sudanese government since 1983 in the latest phase of the country's civil war, controls large swathes of southern Sudan. 
While UNICEF has expressed grave concerns over the fate of children caught up in the fighting and urged all parties to regard those caught in the conflict "as children", Bantariza said it would be difficult for the UPDF to guarantee their safety, because most of them had become highly militarised and were combatants. 
"UNICEF has a problem. They don't know what children they are talking about," he told IRIN. "The definition of children here is not explained. Our situation is such that we cannot talk about children."
"Children need not simply be referred to as children. The younger ones who were not combatants and not useful to Kony were sent to the Sudanese government. But he has retained the older ones who are useful to him," he added.
Bellamy on Thursday emphasised that Uganda had made clear its military campaign in southern Sudan was designed to destroy the LRA, while also securing the release of thousands of abducted children. However, "we have yet to see any evidence that the children are being rescued", she added. 
LRA operations have included the killing and abduction of civilians, the looting of people's property and destruction of their homes, to the extent that humanitarian officials have described its operations as a war against the civilian population and not the Kampala government.
Uganda and Sudan signed a reconciliation accord in Kenya in December 1999, agreeing to foster and maintain security across their common border, and have since reopened diplomatic missions and exchanged envoys. A breakthrough in the improvement of relations between the two countries became apparent in March, with exchange visits by high-level delegations, followed by the agreement permitting the UPDF to operate on Sudanese territory.
According to Justice Africa, a private international organisation promoting peace and human rights in Africa, the process leading to improved relations evolved at the regional level under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) but was also boosted by the US-led war on terror launched after the 11 September events - in which it has secured Khartoum's assistance against terrorism and listed the LRA as a terrorist organisation. 
"Such progress could not have happened without the additional pressure provided by the US-led 'war on terror' after September 11," Justice Africa said in a report released in March on prospects for peace in the region. 
However, the London-based organisation also suggested that the Sudanese military could have warned the LRA of the impending Ugandan offensive, enabling it to evacuate its bases before the arrival of the UPDF.
According to Justice Africa, the LRA's main military bases were within the security perimeter of the Sudanese army's southern command in Juba - its major garrison in southern Sudan, from where it could easily have dealt with the LRA itself.
"The LRA slipped away from its bases in southern Sudan before the Ugandan forces could take any action against them, raising the suspicion that they had been tipped off in advance," it said. 
The organisation also accused Khartoum of "trying to use the agreement as a pretext" for organising its forces to mount ground operations to "relieve its outlying garrisons" in Eastern Equatoria, where the SPLA maintains a stronghold.
According to Bantariza, the SPLA has agreed to permit Ugandan troops safe passage through the territories under its control in southern Sudan but would not involve itself in any fighting between the UPDF and LRA.
For its part, Uganda has warned the SPLA - with which it has a close relationship - against taking advantage of its offensive against the LRA by launching attacks on the Sudanese army, the Nairobi-based EastAfrican weekly newspaper reported on Monday.
"We have contacts with the SPLA. They have been told not to take advantage of this situation to attack Sudanese government positions," the paper quoted Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo as saying.
Meanwhile, UNICEF on Thursday reiterated its stand that the LRA "must unconditionally release the children it has abducted over the years to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves." According to figures quoted by the agency, some 5,555 children (from over 10,000 abducted over the last decade) are still missing. 
"Release by the LRA is essential but that is just the first step," Bellamy said on Thursday. "The children must be found, cared for and given education and a chance to recover. That process can only begin if we have access to them."

The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that it is planning to carry out a series of food deliveries to assist war-affected people in Raga, a strategic town in western Bahr al-Ghazal, southern Sudan, which government troops seized from the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in mid-October 2001.
Laura Melo, a WFP spokeswoman, told IRIN on Wednesday that most of the people to be assisted in Raga were internally displaced persons (IDPs) - some of them returning to Raga after their dispersal in the bush - whose nutritional condition was fragile after spending months in forests and villages, where they had survived on wild fruits, vegetables and game meat during heavy fighting in and around Raga.
"Most of them are still in bad shape. They have no food. And even when there is food, they cannot afford it," Melo said. "WFP is planning to continue to provide food to the IDPs and returnees to the town until conditions improve."
The Khartoum Monitor newspaper reported in Sudan on 27 March that WFP had completed its first food distribution assistance to the war-affected people in the town five days earlier. This was the first food delivery to help re-establish the population in Raga since the government recaptured it, the report said.
Melo said that, although the initial food distribution had targeted 8,134 people, WFP was expecting that number to increase as more people returned to the town. The agency was planning to begin its second food distribution in the second week of April, since the initial rations had only been sufficient for 15 days, she added.
"For the time being, we don't know when conditions will improve. More returnees are still expected. At the time they were displaced, many of them missed their harvests and are in dire need of nutritional support," she told IRIN.
Humanitarian agencies have expressed concern about the repeated displacement of civilians in and around Raga since an SPLA offensive in May/June 2001 in which it captured Raga. 
More than 30,000 IDPs fled northwards from Raga County after SPLA troops seized the town from government forces. Many of them lived and slept in the open air with little food or shelter as they made the march north, until aid agencies put arrangements in place to provide food, shelter and medical attention.
The situation changed again when the government - which had blamed the rebel SPLA for creating the Raga IDP crisis through its military offensive and obstruction of flight paths to western Bahr al-Ghazal - recaptured Raga, Mangayath, Sopo, Deim Zubeir (Daym Zubayr), Yabulu and Boro in October, in an offensive which sparked another rush of tens of thousands of IDPs.
Government forces conducted a lengthy "mopping-up operation" in Raga County after seizing these key towns, during which relief flights and humanitarian operations were severely limited, according to aid officials. 
WFP in October expressed "grave concern" after two days of heavy bombing of the village of Mangayath, just southeast of Raga, "directly into the area where WFP teams were in the process of distributing relief food to some 20,000 civilians" displaced by the Raga fighting.
The presence of IDPs from Raga County has been noted in Ed Daein (Al-Duwaym), Radom and Buram, in Southern Darfur; southeast of Raga in Awoda, Wau County, Bahr al-Ghazal; in Aweil West and North, in northern Bahr al-Ghazal; and in Tambura County, to the south, in Western Equatoria.
The IDP situation in Sudan - which has the biggest displaced population in the world, at an estimated four million - had in 2001 as a result of the escalated fighting around Raga, as well as violent conflict in the Nuba Mountains (Southern Kordofan), Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria, and southern Blue Nile, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported in a briefing paper on 26 March 2002.

The current window of opportunity for peace in Sudan could be missed if efforts are not made by the international community to revitalise a comprehensive peace process, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).
"The international community, led by the United States, must seize this chance before the sides completely re-commit themselves to resolving Africa's longest civil war on the battlefield," ICG said in its March report, "From Window of Opportunity to Missed Opportunity".
A recent escalation in fighting around Sudan's oilfields, increasing use of government helicopter gunships against military and civilian targets in the south, and debates on the nature of external involvement in the peace process all had potential for "closing Sudan's most hopeful window for peace" since 1983, when the most recent phase in Sudan's civil war began, the report said.
Recent progress on four confidence-building measures proposed by the US peace envoy, John Danforth, have raised hopes that an end could soon be brought to Sudan's 19-year civil conflict.
Since Danforth's proposals were first made in November, a cease-fire has come into effect in the Nuba Mountains regions of south-central Sudan; a commission to investigate allegations of slavery has been established; Khartoum has agreed to allow times of tranquility and zones of tranquility for immunisation programmes; and both the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have undertaken to end attacks on civilians.
Despite these advances, Danforth's "humanitarian tests" had not "extracted a better understanding of the adversaries' commitment to a serious and viable peace process", ICG stated. 
Although the Nuba Mountains cease-fire had alleviated the suffering of the Nuba people, it had also allowed the warring parties to divert their forces to the oilfields in western Upper Nile (Wahdah State), the report said.
"The positive and negative implications of his [Danforth's] initiative should be understood fully," it added. 
Although both Khartoum and the SPLM/A have recently signed an agreement to protect civilians and civilian targets in the war, the status of southern oilfields under the agreement remains in dispute. While the SPLM/A says oil installations are legitimate targets in the war, Khartoum claims the agreement should render them free from attack.  The Sudanese government on Saturday denied claims by the SPLM/A to have recaptured a strategic outpost at Nhial Diu, some 40 km southwest of Bentiu in the oil producing region of western Upper Nile, news agencies reported.

"The outlaws on Friday made an attempt to recapture Nhial Diu, and the armed forces stood up to the attackers and inflicted heavy losses on them," AFP quoted General Muhammad Bashir Sulayman as saying on 30 March. 
In an earlier analysis of the conflict in Sudan, ICG advocated the unification of several parallel peace initiatives. Peace efforts made by the regional body the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), by Egypt and Libya jointly, and by Eritrea and Nigeria, had all been of a piecemeal character, it said.
"There has never been a single, multilateral, high-level, sustained international exercise to put it all together. The time to do that is right now, with active engagement by the US and key Europeans," ICG President Gareth Evans said in January. 
In its latest report, ICG said increased diplomatic engagement by the US, UK and Norway had not yet resulted in the emergence of one credible peace process.
This unofficial troika of western countries should work with the key regional players - Kenya and Egypt - to build a "new way forward", it said.
Two co-envoys should be used to coordinate the process - one from Kenya, representing IGAD, with the other a representative of the US, the UK, and Norway, it added.
"International efforts should intensify in pursuit of the construction of a serious peace process and the achievement of a comprehensive agreement," ICG recommended.

The possibility of intensified civil unrest in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, as a result of the Ugandan and Sudanese armies' joint pursuit of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) within Sudan has a number of humanitarian implications for both northern Uganda and Sudan, according to the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP). 
These included the possible return of 3,000 to 5,000 children abducted by the LRA to northern Uganda, it said in its latest emergency report.
The United Nations Children's Fund last week expressed alarm at the fate of thousands of child abductees being held by the Ugandan insurgents as the Ugandan and Sudanese armies engaged in a joint military offensive against the LRA. The agency said its concern was that many children could be killed or injured in the campaign, including children who may have been forced to fight by their LRA captors.
Despite several days of heavy fighting, no children had yet emerged, even as prisoners of war, and the fear was that many might have been killed or else broadly scattered over difficult areas where they could be undergoing untold suffering, agency sources told IRIN on Tuesday.
Humanitarian agencies in Uganda have drawn up contingency arrangements based on the possibility of 4,000 or more ex-LRA combatants (perhaps 1,000 adults and the remainder mostly children)  arriving in the north of the country - either by making their way to Juba, in southern Sudan, from where the International Organisation for Migration would fly them to Uganda, or by making their way directly across country.
Those moving across the border would require emergency attention, such as health care, food assistance, psycho-social support and other help, which would have to be mobilised at once, according to humanitarian sources in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
The Ugandan government's Amnesty Commission would also have an important role to play in assisting ex-combatants resettle and reintegrate in Ugandan society "in order to ensure a durable solution" to the problems of insurgency and insecurity, they added. 
The Ugandan-Sudanese military offensive against the LRA could also cause "the internal displacement of Sudanese civilians in the Eastern Equatoria region and a consequent influx of 60,000 Sudanese refugees to the northwestern region of Uganda," according to the WFP's scenario-building.
Observers told IRIN on Wednesday that they understood this scenario to be addressing the possibility of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) taking advantage of the Ugandan push into Sudan to attack Sudanese government positions - causing insecurity in Eastern Equatoria which, if protracted, could cause an influx of refugees into Uganda - already host to over 150,000 Sudanese refugees. 
WFP also stated that some 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) were likely to return from protected camps in northern Uganda if the threat of the LRA were eliminated. This figure is in line with estimates from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Uganda that perhaps 200,000 IDPs in northern Uganda (about 40 percent of the total) could opt to return to their home areas within a year if security conditions were conducive. 
Given these scenarios, WFP and partner agencies have developed a contingency plan to cater for the return of abducted children, a possible influx of Sudanese refugees and the resettlement of IDPs in northern Uganda, the 28 March report from the UN food agency stated.
WFP said it had pre-positioned available food stocks in anticipated areas of impact. These would most likely be Gulu and Kitgum districts, according to humanitarian sources in Uganda. 
The food aid requirement within the WFP contingency plan fits within a recently approved framework to supply targeted food assistance to IDPs, refugees and vulnerable groups, but the agency urgently requested donors to pledge resources.
The operation would be implemented in 10 districts of northern Uganda in collaboration with the government's Department of Disaster Preparedness and Refugees in the office of the Prime Minister and NGO partners, WFP added.

A group of United Nations agencies has condemned the recent detention of some 14 health workers in southern Sudan, where a civil war is raging, as a major setback to their global efforts to eradicate polio.
It urged all parties to the conflict to allow unhindered access and observe "days of tranquillity" during the next round of national immunisation days, scheduled for 13-26 April. 
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned, in a statement released in New York on Monday, that the global polio eradication target of 2005 would not be reached unless access and safe passage for health workers could be guaranteed in countries in conflict, such as Sudan.
The 14 health workers had been conducting vaccination activities when they were arrested in Nyingol, near Malakal town, Upper Nile, on 15 March by members of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, according to the statement. The SPLA, military wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, has been fighting the Sudanese government in Khartoum since 1983. 
Three of the vaccinators were assaulted, including a female worker who was badly beaten, while all their vaccination equipment and personal effects were looted, the UN agencies stated
"Threats to the security of humanitarian personnel are always of grave concern and the detention of health workers cannot be condoned under any circumstances," Kenzo Oshima, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of OCHA, said in the statement. 
The March 2002 nationwide vaccination campaign in Sudan would have been the first time since the polio eradication effort started in the country 1994 that polio vaccines would have reached all children throughout the country within a period of several days, had it not been for the detention of the health workers
"Most regrettably, the detention of the health workers and an impasse among the warring parties over access to the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile State disrupted the campaign - unnecessarily exposing children to the risk of infection with the polio virus, which can cause paralysis and even death," according to the UN agencies.
Martin Dawes, UNICEF spokesman for southern Sudan, told IRIN on Tuesday that Sudan was critical to the global polio eradication campaign. Citing a 1997 WHO report, he said the most recent outbreak had been in the government-held town of Nyala, Southern Kordofan, in 1993.
That outbreak, attributed to low immunisation cover among children, spread to areas of western Sudan, with about 250 reported cases. 
"There is an ever-present danger of an outbreak," Dawes told IRIN. "We need these days of tranquillity for health workers to go about their work. It is important for all of us."
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) - spearheaded by the WHO, Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF - aims at wiping the polio virus and disease from the face of the earth by 2005, through large-scale vaccination of children aged below five years.
Since 1988, the initiative has reduced the global incidence of the disease by over 99 percent - from an estimated 350,000 cases to fewer than 1,000 in 2001. Today, wild polio virus is circulating in only 10 countries, a drastic decline from 125 countries in 1988, according to Monday's joint UN statement.
"As one of just 10 remaining polio-endemic countries, Sudan is absolutely critical to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative," said WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland. "The world can only be certified polio-free once transmission of wild polio virus ends everywhere. For that to happen, all children under five must be vaccinated."
Sudan is one of the countries, where conflict has remained a major hindrance to the polio eradication campaign, according to Dawes. "Polio eradication is being held up in Africa because of fighting," he said.
Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive director, said the goal of eradicating polio was in sight but could only be achieved with "unhindered access to all children". She urged all parties to the Sudanese conflict to respect commitments they had given to support polio eradication.
Access to all children everywhere - including the most remote areas of Sudan - and the security of health workers would be especially critical to the next round of national immunisation days, scheduled for mid-April, according to Monday's UN statement.

Gerhart Baum, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan, has again expressed concern over the situation in the country and said a long-term, unified initiative for peace in Sudan is the only approach that will succeed. 
It was critical that the root causes of the Sudanese civil war be addressed, that careful political follow-up be carried out, that all relevant actors of society be included in peace negotiations and that concerted efforts were needed to bring about confidence-building and democratisation, a statement from the UN Media Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, quoted Baum as saying.
Introducing his report to the UN Commission on Human Rights on Thursday, Baum said he had paid two visits to Sudan in the past year and noted changes which could lead to an improvement in the rights situation.
Among these, he said, were: recent involvement by the US, which had brokered a cease-fire agreement for the Nuba Mountains, arranged "days of tranquillity" to allow for the eradication of a number of diseases, raised the topics of slavery, abductions and forced servitude, and raised the point of aerial bombardments against civilians. 
There also had been work done on the creation of a national human rights institution and the strengthening of civil society, in cooperation with the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, according to Baum.
Though these developments were encouraging, the human rights situation had not yet changed, and no tangible improvement could really be noted, the UN statement quoted him as saying. [see http://www.unog.ch/unog01/Files/002_media/f2_cmq.html] 
On the debit side, a state of emergency remained in force allowing for flexible and arbitrary security measures; and an amendment to the National Security Forces Act effectively allowed for incommunicado detention for six to nine months, according to Baum. 
Moreover, freedom of the press was still limited, and journalists were sometimes temporarily imprisoned; there continued to be cases of discrimination against Christians; and allied militias on both sides (of the conflict) continued to cause widespread insecurity, making no distinction between military and civilian targets and often resorting to recruitment of child soldiers.
Women continued to suffer disproportionately from the conflict and the application of discriminatory laws, according to Baum.
Within areas controlled by the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army, there appeared to be a widespread continuation of human rights violations, although information was difficult to obtain, he said.
The exploitation of Sudan's oil resources was clearly exacerbating the conflict, as a fight was under way for the control of power and resources worth a great deal of money, the UN statement quoted him as saying.
The Sudanese envoy to the UN, Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim, said he welcomed the positive remarks and recognitions made by the Special Rapporteur, including on the decrease of the number of human rights violations and the admission that there was no religious persecution in the Sudan, the UN press release stated.
The Sudanese government was addressing the problem of internally displaced persons, including providing them with basic education and health services, he said.
Baum had attracted the anger of the Sudanese government in November when he told the UN General Assembly that internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan, now living in camps, had fled from oil regions of the country, yet did not benefit from oil revenues. Since IDPs were part of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, it was appropriate to ask how such money was spent, he added.
Khartoum considered that Baum's request for a breakdown of oil revenues spent on people in the south "violated sovereignty" and was "an unacceptable interference in matters within the jurisdiction of the government".
Regarding individual human rights cases taken up by Baum, Ibrahim said on Thursday 28 March that their root cause was the ongoing conflict in southern Sudan. He called for an immediate comprehensive cease-fire pending a peaceful resolution of the conflict so as to put an end to all those concerns.
Sudan welcomed the recognition by the Special Rapporteur that positive steps had been taken with regard to abductions, and reported that it had taken measures to strengthen the Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC).
In November, Baum expressed concern over the slow progress achieved by CEAWC and said the Khartoum government, while distancing itself from the phenomenon, had "not yet taken concrete measures to prevent new abductions". Its inaction, he said, had the effect of encouraging their occurrence. 
Baum referred particularly to the negative role of the nomadic Arab tribes (mainly the Baqqarah, Zaghawah and Misariyyah) from which government formed murahilin (nomadic) militias, which were deeply implicated in abductions and the targeting of civilians in war. 
Above all, Baum said in November, "the government needs to exercise all its influence on the murahilin, who are responsible for human rights abuses, such as mass killings, torture, rape and abductions". The government shared responsibility, he added, because the Sudanese army tolerated these abuses, integrated the murahilin in its military campaigns and, in part, financed them.
Ibrahim said on Thursday that the Sudanese government had, during the past few months, taken very strong measures to address all the serious concerns expressed by the Commission, including protection of civilians, (unhindered delivery of) humanitarian assistance and abductions.
Aerial bombardments had, on some rare occasions, unintentionally affected civilians - as was the case with other countries with even more sophisticated warplanes - and the full protection of civilians would not be attainable unless a comprehensive cease-fire was accepted by the rebels, he added.
The Sudanese government has sustained serious criticism from humanitarian and human rights organisations about attacks on civilian targets - particularly after an attack by a helicopter gunship on a food distribution centre in Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), in February, in which at least 24 people were killed.
The Sudanese government subsequently offered an explanation and apology for the attack, and said efforts were being made to prevent similar incidents, according to the US government, which had been scathing about what it said was "a horrific and senseless attack" indicating that a pattern of deliberately targeting civilians and humanitarian operations was continuing.

In the face of a major military offensive by Uganda and Sudan against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) inside south Sudan, the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed alarm at the fate of thousands of child abductees being held by the Ugandan insurgents.
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, said the agency's concern was that many children could be killed or injured in the Ugandan-Sudanese joint offensive, including children who may have been forced to fight by their LRA captors.
The agency was becoming increasingly concerned because, despite heavy fighting between Ugandan troops and LRA fighters inside Sudan, there were no signs of children abducted by LRA emerging, even as prisoners of war, a staff member told IRIN on Tuesday. 
Some of the abducted children may have been killed in the recent fighting, or else broadly scattered over difficult areas where they could be undergoing untold suffering, the official said.
"We are getting very concerned, because there have been several days of heavy fighting, and no children have emerged," the source added. 
Led by Joseph Kony (and previously supported by Sudan, in retaliation for Ugandan support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), the LRA has fought Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, from bases in southern Sudan.
LRA operations have included the killing and abduction of civilians, the looting of people's goods and destruction of their homes, to the extent that humanitarian officials have described its operations as a war against the civilian population and not the Kampala government.
Uganda and Sudan signed a reconciliation accord in Kenya in December 1999, agreeing to foster and maintain security across their common border, and have since reopened diplomatic missions and exchanged envoys.
In a joint statement last month publicly confirming their mutual cooperation "to contain the problems caused by the Lord's Resistance Army across the Sudanese-Ugandan borders", the two countries said they would "spare no efforts to safeguard and maintain the safety of innocent civilians", and seek the safe repatriation of abducted children, with the assistance of international humanitarian organisations.
The Ugandan army spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN that his force was pleased with its temporary access to southern Sudan in pursuit of the LRA, and hoped that the military operation could directly result in the rescue of between 2,000 and 4,000 Ugandan captive children.
Bantariza said Ugandan soldiers targeting LRA camps in the Jabalayn and Nisitu areas of southern Sudan had been ordered to treat all LRA fighters as captives to be rescued. 
However, the ferocity of the fighting - in which Uganda said it had overrun four LRA camps 90 miles from Nimule, in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, by Friday - has given rise to unconfirmed reports that many children and women have been among the casualties of the offensive, and generated particular concern over the safety and security of the LRA's child abductees. 
"The combined effort of the Ugandan and Sudanese governments finally to bring an end to the intolerable abuses of the LRA is indeed welcome," Bellamy stated on Friday. "However, reports of the intensity of the military operations raise deep concerns that innocent children and women - the primary victims of Kony's brutality - are themselves being caught in the crossfire."
Bellamy repeated her previous appeals to the LRA to "immediately and unconditionally release the children they are holding".
For 10 years the activities of the LRA had brought fear and disruption to large areas of northern Uganda, from which they abducted an estimated 10,000 children for use as soldiers, porters and sex slaves, the agency reported on Friday. At the LRA's bases in southern Sudan, many abductees had died of disease, starvation and at the violent hands of their captors, it added. 
Recognising that military action to deal with the LRA had always been an option of last resort, Bellamy urged Uganda and Sudan "to conduct their offensives in such a manner as to minimise the risks to children and other civilians". 
UNICEF sources, who put the number of abducted children still under LRA captivity at about 5,000 - in addition to an estimated 2,000 born in captivity - appealed to both sides to "regard the children as children" and appealed for humanitarian access to the region, to save children who may be stranded or wounded.
"We acknowledge that this is a complex situation. These children may be highly militarised, but that doesn't mean they should not be regarded as children," an official added.
Besides abductions, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Uganda has estimated that approximately 398,806 people still live as internally displaced persons  in the northern Ugandan districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader as a result of the LRA insurgency. 
While a lull in LRA activity in late 2000 and early this year had encouraged displaced people to consider returning to their home areas, another upsurge began in mid-February - which is still continuing - and this appears to have triggered the Ugandan-Sudanese joint response.

The government of Sudan's military offensive in Leech State, western Upper Nile, is exacerbating food insecurity in an area where populations are already highly food insecure and many have been displaced several times by fighting, according to the latest southern Sudan update from the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net).
The massive government offensive was "deeply disturbing", and had featured prominently in emergency meetings of humanitarian agencies grouped in the Operation Lifeline Sudan consortium in February and March, the report, covering the period to mid-March, stated.
Leech State lies in an oil-rich area of western Upper Nile - referred to as Unity State by the government of Sudan - that has been intensely contested by the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army in the last two years, where civilians have borne an increasing brunt of military operations, according to humanitarian sources.
Leech State includes a sizeable portion of the oil concession area (known as Blocks 1, 2 and 4) operated by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company Limited, a consortium in which the Canadian company Talisman Energy is a partner.
Humanitarian and human rights groups have repeatedly expressed concern at an apparent increase in the number of direct attacks on civilians - including from helicopter gunships - and an alleged policy of forced displacement of civilians in oil-concession areas. 
The government of Sudan has persistently denied that such a policy exists. 
Northern parts of Leech State have experienced intermittent insecurity since 1999, with populations displaced several times, losing most of their assets, livestock and seed stocks, theUnited States Agency for International Aid- and World Food Programme-supported FEWS Net stated in its latest food security update. Moreover, with agriculture grossly hampered, there had been a progressive reduction in farm sizes and reduced yields, it said.
The economy of western Upper Nile is based on livestock herding, agriculture and fishing, and the livelihoods of the majority Nuer and Dinka inhabitants - based on seasonal movement back and forth between permanent villages and cattle camps - have been sorely affected by insecurity, according to humanitarian sources. 
In normal years (before 1999), households would get up to 50 percent of their food needs from their own crops, but for 2001/02, that would be down to between 20 and 25 percent for middle and rich groups, the FEWS Net update stated. 
Poor families would fare even worse and face a situation where their own crops would contribute only around 15 to 20 percent of food needs, it added.
"The new attacks have resulted in the destruction and depletion of the minimal food stocks, and precluded access to some of the other food sources available, such as fish and wild foods," according to FEWS Net.
Civilians in Leech State were now hiding to protect themselves from [government] helicopter gunship raids, and were "unlikely to risk their lives to receive assistance even if access was possible", FEWS Net reported on 15 March, citing field reports.
Flight denials to some of the affected locations (as a result of military clashes) had "further exacerbated the grave situation" by limiting food- and non-food assistance to needy populations, it said.
Physical insecurity was also exacerbating food insecurity, and presenting a major humanitarian threat, in parts of the Upper Nile, Bahr al-Ghazal and Eastern Equatoria regions, FEWS Net stated.
"As the hunger period draws near, food unavailability is expected to persist in many of the already affected areas before it dissipates with the harvests in July/August, security allowing," it added.

The United States on Monday announced that it will organise an "eminent persons group" to address the issue of slavery, abductions and forced servitude in Sudan.
Penn Kemble, senior scholar at Freedom House, has been asked to organise the group, study the issue and "recommend steps that can be taken by the parties to the conflict, and the international community, to end such abuses", according to US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
The move followed an agreement secured by the US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, with the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in December, he said.
An end to slavery and the abduction of civilians was one of four proposals Danforth put to the government and SPLM/A in November, saying these were confidence-building measures which could be positive factors for achieving peace. The other proposals involved: improved humanitarian access in conflict areas; zones and periods of tranquillity, in which immunisation efforts and other humanitarian activities could proceed; and an end to bombing and military attacks on civilians.
Freedom House, for which Kemble works, describes itself as a non-profit making, nonpartisan organisation which offers "a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world", and which is convinced that American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom. [see http://www.freedomhouse.org/] 
The eminent persons group he is to lead will include experts on Sudan from several European countries, including Norway, Britain, Italy, France and the Netherlands, Boucher added.
In addition to Kemble, the group will include George Moose, a former US assistant secretary of state for Africa; British members John Lyle and Sarah Uppard; Norwegians Leif Manger and Lars Kvalvaag; and Italian Elena Scisco, the Associated Press agency reported on Monday.
The group, supported by research teams, is expected to make two trips to northern and southern Sudan between now and the late-spring rainy season, according to a US press statement. "Upon completion of their travel and research, the group will draft a report and a series of recommendations," it added.
While recognising that some positive steps had been taken with respect to abductions - notably the establishment of the government-supported Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC) - UN Special Rapporteur of the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan Gerhart Baum reported in November that "there continues to be a need for a massive advocacy campaign" and a strong government stand on the issue. [for related stories, go to http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=East_Africa&SelectCountry=Sudan] 
Baum expressed concern over the slow progress achieved by CEAWC, and said the Khartoum government, while distancing itself from the phenomenon, had "not yet taken concrete measures to prevent new abductions". Its inaction, he said, had the effect of encouraging their occurrence.
The Special Rapporteur referred particularly to the negative role of the nomadic Arab tribes (mainly the Baqqarah, Zaghawah and Misariyyah) from which government formed Murahilin militias, which were deeply implicated in abductions and the targeting of civilians in war.
Baum's report also referred to information he had received that forcible recruitment by the SPLA was continuing, despite an SPLM/A programme for demobilising child soldiers.
The Sudanese government has repeatedly stated that there is no slavery practised in Sudan, while admitting that there is a problem of some tribal militias abducting civilians.
"We know there is still a lot we can improve on, and we think that there is a lot of goodwill within the government to make improvements," Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, told IRIN in January.
"We think the antidote to all the human rights ills in Sudan is to have a comprehensive ceasefire to create a conducive atmosphere [for peace negotiations]."

Sudan is likely to strike back at the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which it once supported, following an attack by the rebel group on its troops in southern Sudan last week, according to a Sudanese diplomat. 
Sirajudin Hamid, Charge D'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Uganda, told IRIN from Kampala that Sudanese authorities would take "the right action" to defend Sudanese soldiers from future LRA attacks, after a reported attack on Wednesday 20 March, and would continue to cooperate with the Ugandan government's campaign against the LRA. 
"They [the LRA] did kill some Sudanese soldiers, and there must be some sort of action which will be determined by those in charge," Hamid said, adding that he had no details regarding the action to be taken. 
Led by Joseph Kony (and previously supported by Sudan, in relatiation for Ugandan support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), the LRA has fought Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, from bases in southern Sudan, ostensibly to establish a rule based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.
LRA operations have included the killing and abduction of civilians in northern Uganda, the looting of people's goods and destruction of their homes, such that humanitarian officials have described its operations as a war against the civilian population and not the Kampala government.
The LRA attack on SPAF troops closely followed the 10 March signing of a protocol by Sudan and Uganda, which permits the Ugandan army to pursue the LRA group inside Sudanese territory.
The protocol - in which they said they were currently cooperating and coordinating efforts "to contain the problems caused by the Lord's Resistance Army [LRA] across the Sudanese-Ugandan borders" - was the latest significant step the two countries had undertaken in the implementation of a series of reconciliation agreements the two countries have signed since
1999. [for details, go to http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=26548]
According to media reports, a group of LRA fighters attacked Sudanese army units in Nisitu and Jabuleini, southern Sudan, on 20 March, killing an "unspecified" number of soldiers, including a Ugandan army captain. 
Some 100 LRA fighters, led by senior commanders, were involved in attacking the Sudan Peoples Armed Forces (SPAF) units in surprise raids at around 9.30 am on Wednesday morning, AFP news agency reported.
The Ugandan-government owned New Vision newspaper reported in Kampala on Monday that the number of soldiers killed in Wednesday's attack was 22, including the Ugandan captain. Two UPDF soldiers, who were overseeing implementation of the 10 March protocol, were still missing, it said.
"The Sudan government is tired of [Joseph] Kony. He will have nowhere to hide," the New Vision quoted UPDF commander James Kazini as saying. "We shall send in more troops in Sudan to boost up our forces there."
Hamid said he had no details of whether his government and Uganda were planning any joint operation to fight the LRA, following the group's attack on the SPAF. "They [the Sudanese and Ugandan governments and armies] are cooperating and coordinating. The issue now is whether there will be an expansion or extension of the scope of the existing cooperation," he said.
Uganda Foreign Minister Amama Mbabazi had hinted that the scope of the current cooperation protocol between Kampala and Khartoum could now be expanded to include the involvement of Sudanese soldiers against the LRA, according to the Ugandan media. 
"We are back now at the designing table, taking into account these new developments, and I hope the Sudanese forces will work with us to fight this new crime committed by Kony," the New Vision on Saturday quoted him as saying.
"We have deployed there [in Sudan] to finish the job of Kony. We are there to search, find and destroy Kony and we are in the final stages of getting him." 
UPDF spokesman Shaban Bantariza told IRIN on Monday that the decision on whether or not to renegotiate the protocol rested with the heads of states of Uganda and Sudan.
"They [Sudanese soldiers] were not supposed to be involved [in the military operation against the LRA inside Sudan], but now they have been attacked," he said. "The two presidents will decide if they want to extend the terms of the protocol or not. As soldiers, we will fight our own war and let the politicians do their work."
Under the current protocol, the UPDF had two weeks - until 2 April - in which to pursue the LRA inside Sudan, but Bantariza said on Monday that the Ugandan army operation had not got underway. 
"We haven't started fighting yet. We are still putting our things together. We have made a lot of progress in the planning," he added.

Eritrea on Friday denied "baseless charges" by Sudanese officials claiming Sudanese rebel forces were mobilising within Eritrea near the two countries' common border. 
An Eritrean official, quoted by the official Shaebia website, said there was a "complete absence of the Sudanese opposition militarily in Eritrea". 
"The Sudanese officials know this more than anybody else," he added. "It would be better for the Sudanese government to resolve its political problems instead of resorting to such baseless accusations against others." 
Other Eritrean sources told IRIN the Sudanese government "knows the SPLA has bases in eastern Sudan, so why should they be in Eritrea". "Maybe they [Sudanese authorities] are afraid of an imminent SPLA offensive in the east," the sources added. 
The accusations were reportedly made by the governor of Sudan's Red Sea State, Hatim al-Sheikh al-Sammani, in the Sudanese newspaper 'Al-Akhbar Al-Youm'. He called for a mobilisation of Sudanese troops within the state to "prepare for any surprise attack...in view of rebel forces' concentrations monitored across the border", Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted the paper as saying. According to the report, the governor claimed rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had been sighted across the border from the Karora area of Red Sea State. Sammani said he did not believe Eritrean troops were among the rebel forces, the report added. 
An SPLA official on Friday denied that rebels were preparing to attack Karora. According to the Sudanese 'Al-Khartoum' newspaper, Jor Koj, head of the SPLA office in Cairo, said the allegations were untrue. Aid workers, dealing with the repatriation of Eritrean refugees from Sudan, told IRIN they had not received any reports of Sudanese rebel troop movements. 
"Eritrea has played, and is still playing, a positive role in solving the Sudanese problem through dialogue and negotiations," said the Eritrean official, quoted by Shaebia. "Eritrea will continue to play a positive role and facilitate the achievement of a peaceful and inclusive solution in the Sudan, if the concerned parties desire that." 
In the 1990s, Sudanese-Eritrean relations were strained over accusations that they were supporting each other's rebels, although there has been an improvement in recent years. 

The governments of Uganda and Sudan have distributed a joint statement, through the United Nations Security Council, confirming that, at the initiative of Uganda, they were currently cooperating and coordinating efforts "to contain the problems caused by the Lord's Resistance Army [LRA] across the Sudanese-Ugandan borders." 
The two parties said they would "spare no efforts to safeguard and maintain the safety of innocent civilians", and seek the safe repatriation of abducted children, with the assistance of international humanitarian organisations.
The statement - signed by Sudanese Minister of Information and Communication, Mahdi Ibrahim Mohammed, and Ugandan Minister for Foreign Affairs James Francis Wapakhabulo in Kampala on 13 March - was distributed as a document of the Security Council at the request of Ugandan Ambassador to the UN Semakula Kiwanuka. [see Uganda page at:
http://www.reliefweb.int/]
It said that the two countries had pursued all means and leverages available to peacefully solve the problems of insecurity, violence and child abduction caused by the LRA in their common border area.
Led by Joseph Kony (and previously supported by Sudan, in relatiation for Ugandan support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), the LRA has fought Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, from bases in southern Sudan, ostensibly to establish a rule based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.
LRA operations have included the killing and abduction of civilians, the looting of people's goods and destruction of their homes, such that humanitarian officials have described its operations as a war against the civilian population and not the Kampala government. The United States 2001 added the group - as well as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) operating in western and southwestern Uganda - to its "Terrorist Exclusion List" in December 2001.
The joint Uganda-Sudan statement said that the meeting of Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir with Museveni in Khartoum on 12 January had reinvigorated the countries' shared will to implement the provisions of the Nairobi reconciliation agreement signed in December 1999, "and to further foster and maintain security across their common border".
As a result of these agreements and subsequent understandings, it said, Sudan had "provided access for the friendly Ugandan forces to execute a limited military operation within the borders of the Sudan in order to deal with the LRA problems."
In so doing, the countries intended to work out "practical solutions to the threats facing the safety and security of Sudan and Uganda... in a way suiting the illegality of the activities of the perpetrators." 
The ongoing cooperation further demonstrated the two countries' readiness "to support the international community in its legitimate measures to combat terrorism," according to the statement signed by Mohammed and Wapakhabulo.

The US-based organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to renew and extend the mandate of the Special Rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, and for the establishment of monitoring field offices in the country, in the context of what it described as a worsening of human rights in Sudan in many respects.
Such monitors should especially investigate abuses such as forced displacement, summary execution of civilians and captured combatants, attacks on civilians and civilian targets, torture and ill-treatment, and slavery/abduction, it said, in a memorandum to United Nations member states in general and members of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in particular.
The government of Sudan had long stonewalled on the issue of slavery, claiming it was a matter of rival tribes engaging in hostage taking, over which it had little control. That was "simply untrue, as myriad reports coming out of southern Sudan have made abundantly clear," Human Rights Watch stated. 
"The government of Sudan must... investigate and cooperate completely with search and other agencies to locate and release, without payment, those who have been abducted and enslaved and held in slavery throughout the government-controlled areas of Sudan," it added.
[see http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan.php]

Also on Friday, the organisation expressed concern about the detention of Hassan al Turabi, leader of the opposition Popular National Congress (PNC), who has been detained without trial for one year, and other members of the PNC. 
Turabi was arrested in February 2001, on charges of undermining the constitution and waging war against the state, after he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). 
President Umar Hasan al-Bashir had gone on record as saying that Turabi would never be released unless he denounced the SPLA memo he had signed, HRW stated. 
The Sudanese government had kept in force a state of emergency to suppress opposition to the ruling Islamist party but the most severe abuses occurred in the civil war theatres in the south, in the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, and in the east, Human Rights Watch said in the statement on Friday, 15 March. 
In southern oil fields, government militias and army forcibly displaced thousands of residents; continued to starve, abduct, rape and kill civilians; and continued to burn and bomb villages, churches, hospitals and schools, it said. "Government use of new, heavier arms, including surface-to-surface missiles and helicopter gunships took a toll on the civilian population," it added. 
Government army and militia forces continued to abduct women and children during ongoing raids in the south, mostly in northern Bahr al-Ghazal, "and often in connection with the military train they accompanied to Wau, a garrison town," Human Rights Watch reported on Friday.
The authorities in Khartoum announced in November 2001 their intention to set up a tribunal to try such abductors.
Rebel forces battling Khartoum had also "engaged in indiscriminate attacks on civilians", looting of civilian property, forced conscription and portering, abductions and rape, according to Human Rights Watch.
Though the SPLM/A had demobilised more than 3,000 child soldiers [last year], "many more remained in its forces and in the forces of the other rebel groups," it stated on Friday. HRW also referred to allegations that "many gang rapes by SPLA soldiers" were committed in western Upper Nile in February 2001.
In Friday's memorandum, Human Rights Watch urged all parties to the conflict in Sudan "to protect human rights and respect international humanitarian law in areas they control."
In particular, the belligerents should respect the rights of women and children, and ensure the safety of all civilians - including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) - in their areas of control, it added.

On 19 March, IRIN interviewed Roger Guarda, outgoing UNDP Resident Representative and Resident Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan. He speaks about key issues and concerns, at a time when the country is considered to have a rare window of opportunity for peace. 

Question: Much of the focus in Sudan at the moment is on the cease-fire and humanitarian needs in the Nuba Mountains area of  Southern Kordofan. How do you see the situation there compared to the rest of Sudan?

Answer: Well, I think there is a lot of expectation now that the trial in the Nuba Mountains will be some sort of a model for the rest of Sudan, in terms of a ceasefire and a programme to rehabilitate the whole area. And so there is a lot of hope, definitely, with regard to that operation.

Q: With the current emphasis on Nuba, is there a danger of vulnerable people in other conflict- or drought-affected areas being forgotten, or sidelined? 

A: No, I think that everywhere the conflict is going on is populated by people who are extremely affected by that conflict - and the Nuba Mountains were, and all the others still are. But the fact that we're going to focus now on the Nuba Mountains does not mean that the other people are going to have their situation either improved or worsened [in the short term]; it's just they will continue in the very sad, same situation as before.
But hopefully, what's being tried in the Nuba situation can be replicated in other parts of the country.

Q: Are there any particular parts of Sudan that you consider well suited to replication of this Nuba initiative for a cease-fire and expanded humanitarian access? 

A: Well yes, the whole conflict area... of course, Bahr al Ghazal. Another place where it would be really required is western Upper Nile/Unity State, where a lot of fighting is going on right now, and where people are being really affected very badly by this conflict. 
If the Nuba Mountains model, if I can call it that, could be used in areas like this, this would have a tremendous impact on the possibility of achieving a full peace at some point.

Q: Western Upper Nile is one of the hot spots in the Sudanese war at the moment. Is the oil issue there a critical factor, in your view?

A: Yes I think it is, I think it is. I think all observers will say that. The oil is definitely a focus, a centre of attention for the conflict itself. And, obviously, the parties to the conflict are fighting it out there more and more strongly. And so it is a fact that this [the oil] is certainly an important factor in keeping the war going.

Q: Many people are keenly focused on the undoubted problems of Sudan, while some see progress in recent months. How have you seen the situation evolve in your time in the country?

A: When I arrived two year ago there didn't seem to be any hope for peace. The official peace talks in IGAD [the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, mandated with finding peace] seemed to be stuck at the time, there was no willingness on either side to compromise on any of their positions. This went on for about a year, if not a year and a half, and then suddenly, things started opening up.
Over the last few months - basically, since US Senator Danforth's initiative [to expand humanitarian access and protect civilians as a test of the conflict parties' sincerity about peace] started - and strong pressure has been put by the international community on the parties, I think we've seen a real opening. 
The various components of the Danforth initiative [on Nuba, slavery, attacks on civilians and wider humanitarian access for immunisation and other programmes] are basically confidence building measures.
If we manage, altogether, the whole international community, to continue to put pressure on the parties, and to provide support to the parties at the same time in implementing programmes like the Nuba Mountains or other parts of this initiative, I think there is a real chance of peace now.
It might take some time before full compromises are made by the parties but I think we're on the road there. The outlook now, compared to when I came two years ago, is dramatically different - dramatically different - and I have gone from pessimism to optimism.

Q: The US engagement you mention has brought some sense of momentum in Sudan, but what do you make of suggestions that the US may have been better to focus on the big issue - comprehensive peace - instead of the Danforth proposals? 

A: I think the parties basically lack confidence in each other. So many years of conflict has hardened positions and, to try and tackle the political differences cold, just going straight into them, would, I think, not have produced the desired results.
I believe the way Senator Danforth has approached the whole problem - identifying particular issues, which are very sensitive areas still but in which one can build confidence between the two parties; where they will have to work together, like in the Nuba Mountains and in very sensitive areas like abduction and slavery - could certainly facilitate an improvement of the relationship if we manage to make progress on these.
And if we can improve the confidence levels between the two sides, then we can tackle more successfully the hard-core political differences.

Q: Attacks on civilians have been the headlines recently. How important do you think these are overall, in the humanitarian and political contexts?

A: From a humanitarian point of view, these attacks are, of course, totally unacceptable and shocking, and extremely sad. 
Each time they happen, we protest them emphatically because it is just not acceptable for things like this to happen. They've been happening so long and, for them to happen now, during this particular initiative, is even more unfortunate. So I hope that people who are carrying out these attacks will not succeed in derailing this process that is started now: this process of confidence-building... 
And I think the attacks are important, very important, not only because of the humanitarian aspects: the human tragedy that they produce, but also because there is a danger that they come to derail the whole process. 
So, we will continue to protest emphatically every time these things happen. They are just totally unacceptable. 

Q: Many people are speaking at the moment of a new window of opportunity for peace in Sudan. What can the international community and, more specifically, the United Nations do to take advantage?

A: I think one of the things that has to be done, as I mentioned earlier, is to help build confidence between the two sides. There is none now, but hopefully the initiative that is now being carried out will start the process of confidence building.
I think the UN has a major role to play there because these confidence building measures will also have to be supported by outside assistance, outside support. Just as has been demonstrated in the Nuba Mountains, the United Nations is in a position to provide the support: the humanitarian, rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance, that will be at the core of the initiative. So I think the UN has a major role to play. 
I think also that the UN has to start helping the two sides see what the future Sudan might look like. As it stands now, both sides are bent on their own positions and don't look at the long term, don't see the benefits that peace might bring - except for the immediate end to the suffering and the political gains they could make. 
I think if the United Nations were able to demonstrate to both sides that there is a bright future ahead if this war came to an end - from an economic point of view and a longer term vision of what Sudan would look like if peace came - then maybe people would find this is something to fight for, but not with weapons: to fight for with hard work, and combining efforts and joining hands.

Q: A crucial issue in the big picture on Sudan is how, and whether, the different IGAD and Egyptian-Libyan peace initiatives can be reconciled. Do you think there is a role for the international community, or should it be left for countries in the region to resolve?

A: I think the problem is sufficiently complex that as many people as can help should help, so IGAD member countries [Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, along with Sudan] definitely have a role to play, but I think the international community as a whole also has a duty to help. 
I would think that a bringing together of the two initiatives, joining them into one single effort, is essential because the parties should be confronted with one set of approaches to the problem - and not two, with the possibility of playing one set against the other.
It is very important that the integration of the two initiatives takes place, and I think pressure should be put on the parties for this to happen, and the pressure should come from the whole international community - not only the IGAD countries. 

Q: In terms of bringing pressure to bear, what types of 'carrots and sticks' are available to the international community, and suitable for use in Sudan?

A: Well, I think that one of problems Sudan has had over the last few years - especially the government in Khartoum - has been political isolation. And this has progressively been changed, up to a limit. 
I think the normalisation of relations, combined with possible development assistance which has been denied to Sudan [the country gets only humanitarian assistance from most donors] is one way of putting pressure here. There are ways and means of demonstrating to the parties to the conflict that peace has benefits.
The SPLM [Sudan People's Liberation Movement] side has basically been receiving humanitarian assistance - just as the north has - but I think the international community has a weapon in its hands in terms of pressure, and that is the assistance it can provide to building a real Sudan, a developed Sudan.
This would equally apply to north and south - and eventually to both sides at the same time, if they manage to get to a peaceful solution of their problems. 

Q: And lastly, is there anything in particular you would like to have seen during your time in Sudan that has not come to pass? Or anything that has happened that you really wish had not?

A: The thing I would have preferred not to happen is these attacks against civilians. These are  something absolutely abominable which should never have happened, and that is certainly something  whose occurrence I regret immensely.
What I would have liked to see happen - and did not - is some movement on resolution of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
As you know, Sudan has the largest IDP population in the world - and these people are just left to their own devices, basically, with some assistance provided by the international community. Only a limited number of them are living in camps where they can receive that assistance: most of them are just out there, on their own, without any support... 
I would have liked to see a real approach - a real policy approach - to resolving that issue, either by helping them to return where they were coming from, or helping them to settle for good where they have decided to stay. And that, unfortunately, has not happened. 
There are now signs that there is an increasing willingness to deal with the issue, and we in the UN are trying to help in that regard: Francis Deng, Special Representative of the Secretary-General [Kofi Annan] for Displacement, has been here. He will organise a workshop aimed at defining a policy for Sudan - both north and south - on how to deal with the issue. 
I regret that this will happen after I leave, because I would have liked to see a beginning of a resolution of that problem.

The United Nations Security Council, acknowledging that civilians rather not combatants frequently bear the brunt of modern warfare, on Friday adopted new guidelines designed to help deliberations on the protection of non-combatants. 
The document, which also acknowledged the impact of wartime hardships borne by civilians on any effort to achieve durable peace, reconciliation and development, was welcomed as a useful and practical tool by UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kenzo Oshima. 
Briefing the Council prior to the adoption of the statement, he stressed how important it was that "decisive and timely action" was taken to end the suffering of millions of innocent victims of warfare, including women and children. 
He cited Sudan as an example, saying that the international community had been "dismayed by the recent pattern of attacks on civilians, humanitarian workers and facilities."
Oshima welcomed the 10 March agreement by the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan people's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to establish an international verification mechanism to investigate attacks on unarmed civilians. "We await concrete results," he added. 
[see http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2002/SC7329.doc.htm]
Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, the Council's current president, said the 15-member body had stressed the need, when considering ways to protect civilians in armed conflict, "to proceed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the particular circumstances."
The aide-memoire adopted by the Security Council identifies 13 core objectives for protecting civilians in conflict situations. These include:
Access to vulnerable populations; separation of civilians and armed elements; justice and reconciliation; security, law and order; disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and rehabilitation; small arms and mine action; training of security and peacekeeping forces; effects on women; effects on children; safety and security of humanitarian and associated personnel; media and information; natural resources and armed conflict; and the humanitarian impact of sanctions. 
The aide-memoire (intended to be a living document, updated regularly) also outlined specific issues for consideration under each of the objectives, and precedents established by past Council for improving protection of, and humanitarian access to, vulnerable populations. 
The aide-memoire would serve as a checklist for Council members when establishing, changing or closing a peacekeeping operation but - considering that, most frequently, civilians are caught in circumstances of dire need where a peacekeeping operation has not been established - it would also offer guidance for potential actions outside the scope of peacekeeping, according to the Security Council.
For UN agencies, it would serve as a useful checklist in their daily work and as a reporting guide on the protection of civilians, both in the field and at headquarters level, Oshima said. 
In addition, the document would provide a useful framework for considering issues and concerns that cut across four related thematic areas: women, peace and security; children in armed conflict; conflict prevention; and the protection of civilians in armed conflict, Oshima stated. 
France's representative to the Security Council, Jean-David Levitte, spoke on Friday of how 95 percent of the victims of World War I were soldiers but now, 95 percent of the victims of war were civilians. This was a radical change in the conduct of war, and completely justified the Council's focus on protecting civilians, he said. 
Each of the primary objectives was of interest not just to the humanitarian wing of the United Nations but - because of the complex interaction between these issues and the conduct of conflict - they were also important for maintaining peace and security, United Kingdom ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told the Council. 
Oshima emphasised that the protection of civilians should be kept "high and firmly on the Security Council's agenda", especially given the recent escalation of violence in the Middle East and the conflict situations in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The extension of a two-month old cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region is essential if the Nuba people, particularly in rebel-held areas, are to move out of economic isolation, and benefit from long-term development opportunities, according to the results of a UN-led multi-agency assessment mission to the area. 
"The defining constraint on virtually all agricultural and related activities, and a realisation of the potential of the region and its people, is the civil war which has endured in the area from the late 1980s," the office of the UN Coordinator for Sudan, Roger Guarda, stated in a report on the rapid-needs assessment, conducted over a three-week period in January.
The war has had the effect of restricting freedom of movement in the Nuba region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, forcing communities away from the fertile plains into more mountainous areas under the control of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and into "economic isolation", the report said.
Complementary multi-agency and multi-sectoral assessment missions were sent to both government- and rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains, and included representatives from the Sudanese government's Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other relief organisations.
In the areas controlled by the rebel movement, an "emerging cycle of impoverishment" was evident, partly due to people's inability to access good agricultural land due to fear of abduction, rape or murder, according to the assessment report. 
In government-controlled areas, there were an estimated 170,000 people living in what were, in effect, displaced persons camps, it said. Both access to farming land and pastoral practices (based on freedom of movement) had been significantly restricted, with people's capacity to maintain their livelihood support systems "badly eroded", it added.
About 1.13 million people live in the 80,000 square kilometres of the Nuba Mountains region. The mountains themselves, rugged granite outcrops up to 1,000m high, constitute roughly one-third of the area, rising above extensive and fertile agricultural plains, which once produced a significant food surplus for other parts of Sudan.
Representatives of the Sudanese government and SPLM/A-Nuba signed a cease-fire agreement in January, to last for an initial period of six months. A Joint Military Commission (JMC) designed to oversee the cease-fire has been established and teams of international monitors are due to be dispatched to the ground in the coming weeks.
Although the Nuba people were more than capable of producing their own food, and even a surplus, they now lack essential social support services in health, water and education, as well as agricultural and livestock extension services, according to the Nuba needs assessment.
A further, serious constraint on virtually all economic activity and social services throughout the Nuba Mountains region was the almost complete absence of adequate arterial and feeder roads, the mission report stated. Road traffic was obliged to use a network of rough dirt and sand tracks running through the plains areas and the mountains, with the latter being now virtually impassable to traffic because of the civil war and the existence of land mines.
"A fundamental priority for a cost-effective relief and rehabilitation programme will thus be immediate attention to this run-down road network, both in the short and long terms," the UN report stated. Education, health and nutrition, and water and sanitation were also all important areas for intervention, it said.
The overall situation with respect to education in the region was one of "chronic shortage in every conceivable respect", according to the assessment. School structures were generally very basic and inadequate, with the situation being worse outside the towns and in the SPLM/A-controlled areas. It was estimated that, of just over 500 schools in government-controlled areas and 92 in SPLM/A-controlled areas, at least 60 percent required rehabilitation. 
"The result is a very low enrolment of children in school (especially girls), poor attendance and high drop-out rates," the report stated.
The most common diseases in the Nuba Mountains region were found to be malaria, diarrhoea, and acute respiratory infections.
Awareness of HIV/AIDS and its effects was "poor" among the general public, but also among health workers. "Little or no sensitisation or training seems to be available for health workers, with the result that they tend not to practise any preventive measures", the report said. In SPLM/A-controlled areas, there was only one doctor per 123,000 people.
Health and nutrition needs identified in the report included: the development of capacity for training health workers; rehabilitation and construction of health-care facilities; the promotion and implementation of an expanded programme of immunisation; and the provision of basic drugs, medicines and nutritional supplements.
Access to safe drinking water was also difficult in many areas, particularly in the dry season, which normally runs from November until May, according to the assessment report.
In particular, the displacement of communities away from the plains into SPLM/A-controlled areas in the hills had increased the time taken for women and girls to collect water. Some women had to walk for up to eight hours in a round-trip to collect water during the dry season, it said. 
If the free movement of civilians and goods, including humanitarian assistance, could occur through the whole Nuba Mountains region, the worrying situation could turn around very quickly, the report said. 
"However, it will be important to remember that for the people in the SPLM/A-controlled areas in particular, there will need to be a time of confidence-building for them to believe in peace. Only then will they feel safe enough to venture from their mountain-top homes and back onto the fertile plains," it added.

The European Commission (EC) recently announced its decision to support a major programme, endorsed by both the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), to tackle the serious problem of land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the country.
The programme "will involve cross-line activities, and constitute a very strong message for peace" by allowing civil society to build up an initiative to deal with land mines even as the country is still at war, according to the EC.
The government has signed, but not yet ratified, the Ottawa Treaty against land-mine use, while the SPLM/A signed an agreement on a total ban on antipersonnel land mines throughout territories under its control in October 2001.
The main objective of the new mine action programme is "to begin the process which will facilitate a wide-scale national mine action programme in peace time", according to the EC. The initiative would involve applying internationally recognised standards, and developing cross-line contacts and cooperation, it stated last week. It has committed 1.5 million euros (some US $1.31 million) for an initial one-year effort, to run to February 2003. 
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has also become involved recently in assessing how it could assist in Sudan, according to humanitarian sources. The unit had been very wary of trying to survey or lift mines in a war situation (especially when minefields have been laid a long time ago, and have not been mapped or had their boundaries delineated), but the apparent cross-line commitment to tackling land mines had encouraged it to become involved, they said.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which has been engaged in land-mine awareness activities in Sudan, said on Thursday it welcomed the EC-supported initiative, as it had seen the terrible toll of land mines among women and children.
"We're very glad to see the situation being addressed in a serious manner," Martin Dawes, the UNICEF Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) spokesman, told IRIN on Thursday. "We know of the injuries and deaths that occur from land mines and discarded ordnance, and we welcome this attention; something has to be done about this problem."
Just recently, Dawes said, he had heard of a teacher and two pupils being seriously injured in three separate incidents while tending a school garden in Maridi, Western Equatoria. It was high time that a serious initiative was undertaken to survey, map and hopefully remove mines - in addition to the mine-awareness activities that were already taking place, he added.
Felipe Donoso, head of office for Sudan at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Nairobi, also welcomed the initiative, saying that beyond agreement on no longer laying antipersonnel mines, it was also necessary to remove those already in use, because they violated international humanitarian law and the laws of war. "Most victims of antipersonnel mines in Sudan, as elsewhere, are civilians and not actors in the war," Donoso told IRIN. 
The new cross-lines mining programme being developed was only possible because "there is a common ground between major parties to the conflict - the government and SPLM/A - in recognising the humanitarian and economic damage being inflicted by land mines," according to the EC.
National nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) from both government-controlled and non-government- controlled parts of the country are set to implement the programme, with the support of Landmine Action, a British-based consortium of NGOs, and Oxfam GB.
Some 32 mainly Sudanese groups participating in the programme are grouped under the Sudan Campaign to Ban Landmines (SCBL), which operates in northern Sudan, and Operation Save Innocent Lives (OSIL) in southern Sudan.
The programme intends to build a strong information network extending to all current and past war-affected areas, said EC delegate Xavier Marchal in a press conference in Khartoum, adding that this would "act as a conduit to report all incidents where people or animals fall victim to land mines".
Incoming information about land-mine incidents will be fed through local focal points and field officers to two main operational centres, one in Khartoum and one in the SPLM/A controlled south, according to the EC. The programme is also intended to respond to the immediate needs of land-mine victims and to mount limited survey, marking and clearance operations when the opportunity arises. 
Activities are initially to be concentrated in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, where a local cease-fire between the government and SPLM/A Nuba is in effect, according to sources in Khartoum.
Mines have been called "the perfect soldiers": they are cheap to produce and do not need maintenance; once they have been placed, they stand guard without needing sleep, food, water or drugs; and they never miss - however unintended their target.
Land mines, or at least antipersonnel mines, would be better depicted as terrorists, not soldiers, according to Donoso of the ICRC. "They are terrorists because they don't make a distinction between enemy fighters and civilians - women, kids, old women - in clear violation of international law," he told IRIN on Thursday. 
Africa suffers from an epidemic of land mines and UXO, and is the most heavily mined continent in the world, with at least 40 million land mines, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It describes Sudan as being among the most "severely infested countries" in a continent where land mines kill, injure and disable over 12,000 people per year.
There are between 500,000 and two million land mines in Sudan, laid by both the government and rebel groups, according to considered estimates. Mining continues to occur in the south of the country - already particularly affected, especially around towns - according to the Red Cross Federation. 
The US-based Human Rights Watch reported in its World Report 2001, that the Ottawa Treaty, signed by Sudan in 1997, remained unratified, and that the government had not destroyed antipersonnel land mines as required. It also continued to use land mines in some areas, such as the eastern front, the report added. 
The government denied, at an international conference on land mines in Nicaragua in September 2001, that it had used mines recently, but spoke of their continued use by the SPLA. Khartoum gave as its reason for the delay in ratifying the Ottawa treaty the ongoing war in Sudan, but said, despite limited resources, it had already started implementing the agreement. [http://www.icbl.org/news/2001/96.php] 
During an interview with IRIN in January, Muhammad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, also dismissed claims that the Khartoum government had been laying land mines in southern Sudan. "If they are accusing us of carrying out offensives against innocent civilians, it is rubbish to even speak about land mines. Land mines are defensive weapons, and are not used when carrying out an offensive," he said.
The government of Sudan, as cited by the Red Cross Federation, estimates that mine accidents have resulted in more than 700,000 amputees and an equal number of deaths. Most parts of Sudan, particularly in the south, lack medical services and rehabilitation centres, and have limited equipment and qualified personnel to conduct basic life-saving procedures. 
Mines are typically deployed in fields, near villages and towns, on roads, around wells, schools and health clinics, so that - besides killing and disabling individuals - they damage communities by preventing land cultivation, blocking passage to safe drinking water, limiting humanitarian access, closing roads and isolating villages and towns.
The new mine-action network in Sudan would seek to access information related to arable and pastoral land which is unused due to the actual or presumed presence of minefields, the EC stated last week. 
Pastoralist communities are most affected by the scourge of land mines in Sudan, primarily because of the migratory range of nomadic pastoralists across the major areas of conflict - and thus the main minefields - in search of water and grazing, according to humanitarian sources.
Casualties from mines and UXO currently occur at a rate of at least 10 per day in southern Sudan, peaking well over that figure whenever the government conducts aerial bombing runs on civilian population centres, according to one NGO. That figure would greatly increase in proportion to the number of returning refugees and internally displaced people returning to mine-infested areas, it added.
The pastoralist economy and culture is central to Sudanese society and, "one may realistically assume, great harm done to pastoralism is also great harm done to Sudan," it said. In that light, the new mine action should include pastoralist groups and emphasise the need to report all mine incidents, including those involving animals, it added. 
The current Sudan initiative was notable for its depoliticisation of the issue of land mines, in that it is cross-line - endorsed by both major parties to the conflict and does not intend to embarrass the forces responsible for using them, but rather to emphasise the indiscrimate nature of the damage they cause, according to sources familiar with the scale of the problem.
Even after a sustained peace, it will take many years to clear Sudan of land mines, they told IRIN. However, efforts such as the current initiative could speed up that process by identifying now in advance of the lives being lost and destroyed, the livestock killed, the massive areas closed to economic uses - as well as the needs and priorities for mine action. 
There was an urgent need to extend the availability of medical and prosthetic facilities in rural areas, because it was in these places that most injuries and deaths occurred, largely unheralded, the sources said.
Beyond that, all parties to the conflict (including militias and locally recruited forces) must be persuaded to stop the use of land mines, and especially antipersonnel mines. "The continued deployment of these weapons is an abuse, and an act of long-term destruction which must be considered a crime against the people of Sudan," they added. 

The United States says it has secured agreement from the government of Sudan and southern rebels to ensure the protection of civilians against military attack.
"We now have an agreement... that will permit, we hope, more secure humanitarian activity in Sudan, and allow discussions on the way forward in the peace process," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at a press briefing on Monday.
According to Boucher, agreement was reached with the Sudanese government last week, and the deal was endorsed by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) over the weekend.
The agreement is to be monitored by two teams of monitors: one, for the north, in Khartoum, and the other in southern Sudan, probably near the SPLM/A base in the town of Rumbek, Lakes (Buhayrat) State, United Press International (UPI) quoted State Department officials as saying.
"The Sudanese government has agreed to an international monitoring mechanism to assure that the agreement is complied with, and that will go forward as well," Boucher said. 
The agreement opens the way for the US to resume peace discussions with Khartoum, which Washington suspended in February following an attack by a government of Sudan helicopter gunship on a relief centre at the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), in which at least 24 people were killed (more than 47 met their deaths, according to some reports).
The Sudanese government had offered an explanation and apology for the attack, and efforts were now being made to prevent similar incidents, according to Boucher.
He said last week that the US had received a letter from Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il in which the Sudanese government acknowledged the tragedy at Bieh, and indicated concrete steps it intended to take to ensure there was no repeat - "including moving the approval process for all military flights to the Khartoum military command". 
An undertaking to end attacks on civilians was one of four confidence-building measures proposed by the US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, in November. The other three concerned: the creation of zones and times of tranquillity (throughout Sudan) in which humanitarian assistance could be offered to vulnerable populations; an end to the taking of slaves; and an internationally monitored cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan. 
Bringing an end to attacks on civilians has proved to be the most contentious of Danforth's proposals, with the Sudanese government saying it would only end such attacks if the rebel SPLM/A suspended its own military activity. The rebel movement has repeatedly indicated its unwillingness to accept a global cease-fire in the absence of a comprehensive peace settlement.
According to the Sudanese government, the scope of the US proposal has now been widened to include all forms of attacks on civilians by both the government and rebels (rather than focusing on aerial bombing, carried out by government forces).
"The proposal is a comprehensive one that covers protection from war-related harm, of not only civilians but also civilian installations and other civilian aspects," AFP news agency on Sunday quoted Sudanese Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Mutrif Siddiq as saying. 
According to Boucher, the agreement on attacks on civilians meant the Sudanese government was now making progress on all four of Danforth's proposals. 
"It is the fourth point that he [Danforth] was looking for agreement on. So that completes his initial effort to get an agreement on those four points and to monitor their implementation," Boucher said.

Delegates at last week's Sudan Ecumenical Forum in the UK capital, London, warned on Thursday that any peace settlement in Sudan "must be just and lasting and not a quick-fix solution".
Delegates called for pressure on the government of Sudan to put an end to bombings and other attacks on civilians, a suspension of oil production, and recognition of the right to self-determination of the southern Sudanese and other marginalised people in Sudan, according to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD). 
"There are currently the conditions to achieve a peace deal in Sudan and no reason why we should not try," Clare Short, British Secretary of State for International Development, told delegates. "It is fantastically important that we try to end this war," CAFOD quoted her as saying. 
The conference, from 4 to 6 March, brought together religious leaders from Sudan and their worldwide church partners in an effort to promote dialogue and "find solutions to the problems that lie at the heart of Sudan's conflict", according to Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund, co-sponsors of the event.
The forum was an effort to ensure that the voice of southern Sudanese civil society is heard more clearly, according to the three charities. "Any peace agreement that is reached without taking into account the views of the ordinary people will not be sustainable," said Rob Rees, CAFOD programme officer for Sudan.
Attacks on civilians, oil production and self-determination were the "three key issues" raised at the meeting, with delegates making it clear that the UK Government and international partners must address these if a just and lasting peace were to be achieved, Christian Aid reported. 
Firstly, it said, the churches of southern Sudan had systematically documented bomb attacks on civilians by the government of Sudan since 1999, and recent reports had revealed an increase in attacks on civilians using helicopter gunships. 
Delegates had also confirmed the Sudanese churches' position that "oil exploration must be suspended until there is a just and sustainable peace and agreement has been reached for the equitable sharing of resources," the nongovernmental organisation stated. Research, particularly in the last two years, had shown that the oil business had aggravated the suffering of civilians, especially in oil-producing areas, it said. 
Thirdly, the Sudanese church delegates called on all their political leaders "to ensure that any peace settlement includes the rights of the southern Sudanese and other marginalised people to determine for themselves how they should be governed", according to Christian Aid. 
Delegates at the London forum also reaffirmed the churches' position that slavery and abduction were the result of the ongoing Sudanese conflict, and must therefore be ended through a political settlement, CAFOD reported.

The European Union, recently urged by a southern grouping to reconsider its aid policy on Sudan in light of a government attack on a food relief centre in western Upper Nile on 20 February, said on Monday that development assistance had not been restored to the country and that conditionality had been built into proposals to do so. 
European Union (EU) proposals on the progressive normalisation of relations and restoration of development assistance would take place in parallel with the continuing EU-Sudan political dialogue, according to European Commission Delegate to Sudan, Xavier Marchal.
Marchal also referred to an EC statement on the matter, which stated clearly that "future developments are dependent on continuing good progress in the political dialogue begun [with the Sudanese government] in 1999", and that these would be reassessed later this year. The European Commission is the secretariat of the European Union. 
A grouping of eight southern Sudanese politicians recently urged the EU to reassess its aid policy in light of the 20 February helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre in Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State) on 20 February, as well as the general human rights situation in Sudan, according to news reports.
In a statement signed by Joseph Ukel, head of the Union of Sudan African Parties (USAP), former Sudanese Vice-President Abel Alier and six other politicians, it said the 20 February attack and other such incidents had made Sudan "exceedingly well known for its bad human rights record", Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on 2 March. 
After the Bieh attack, in which at least 24 people were killed (and more than 47 met their deaths, according to some reports), the US government announced it was suspending peace discussions with Khartoum until it offered a satisfactory explanation. 
The EU also expressed its deep concern and called on Khartoum to provide a full explanation and urgently uphold its agreements with the United Nations on the humanitarian operation in Sudan. 
The government expressed its regret for the incident, which, it said, was a mistake. Although it was government policy to ensure that civilians were not targets, "unforeseen casualties happen to innocent civilians" in war situations, it added.
The Bieh atrocity was special in that it followed "the recent certificate of good character given by the EU to the government of Sudan", AFP quoted the southern politicians as saying. 
After 11 years during which formal EU development assistance to Sudan was suspended due to peace, governance and human rights concerns, the EC announced on 31 January that it intended to embark on a progressive normalisation of relations.
The Commission would now begin the process of working with Sudan to prepare a country strategy for assistance, at the same time as political dialogue with Khartoum continued "to address enduring concerns about the internal armed conflict in the country", it said. 
The Sudanese government had been invited to work with the EC to determine the programming of European Development Fund (EDF) support, and the measures to be undertaken in the fields of concern which had led to the 1990 suspension: human rights, democracy, rule of law and progress on achieving peace, it added. 
Following commitments given by Khartoum during a high-level EC visit in December, Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Poul Nielson announced that preparations would begin this year to resume normal relations under the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. 
The EC also announced on 23 January its adoption of a 'Global Plan' of humanitarian aid to Sudan, worth 17 million euros (almost US $15 million) as a measure of European solidarity with the innocent people caught up in the ongoing tragedy of the Sudanese civil war. "The plight of the Sudanese people is seldom in the headlines nowadays, but we have a duty to stay the course," said Nielson.
However, the eight southern politicians maintained in their statement that it was "known by all except the EU governments that [Khartoum] has not changed its plans and aggressive intentions against the south, and its oppressive and ethnic-cleansing policies", AFP reported.
Within the Cotonou framework, two grant allocations totalling some 155 million euros (about $136 million) are envisaged for Sudan from the 9th European Development Fund, according to the EC statement of 31 January. 
For the next five years, 135 million euros (about $118.4 million) have been allocated for development operations, with a view to reducing poverty, it said; another 20 million euros (about
$17.5 million) is potentially available for emergency assistance, debt relief initiatives and measures to mitigate the adverse effects of instability in export earnings. 
The EU's decision to plan closer ties with Sudan without signposting clear expectations on Khartoum's commitment to peace was recently decried by John Prendergast, co-director for Africa of the International Crisis Group (ICG). 
The EU had "shot its bolt" by announcing that Sudan could expect to join Cotonou, work towards normalised relations and secure access to debt relief (something for which Khartoum was desperate - having a heavy debt overhang as a result of forward spending against anticipated oil revenues), Prendergast told a recent briefing in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
In this regard, the EU had shown "unbelievably bad timing" and appeared to have indicated that it would tread its own path, when what was needed was a serious, coordinated international effort "to create leverage for a serious peace process", Prendergast said.
The EU would do better to address the key issue - a comprehensive peace - and focus its constructive engagement with Khartoum on "peace process benchmarks" to achieve that, rather than on individual issues which did not necessarily contribute to that overarching goal, he added. 
Prendergast had it wrong in relation to the EU and Sudan, because the European statement had outlined conditionalities, the EU was still engaged in a political dialogue with the Khartoum government and had not restored its development assistance, Xavier Marchal informed IRIN on Monday. 
For its part, the European Commission stated on 31 January that the amounts in development assistance envisaged for Sudan were "indicative" and not "entitlements", and that they could be revised subject to Sudan's needs and performance. Those figures would also be "substantially
increased by releasing Sudan's unused allocations from previous funds", it said. 
The EC would not be pursuing the normalisation of relations with Sudan in isolation but in parallel with continuing political dialogue, the progress of which would be evaluated by the end of this year, it said. 
"Disappointing results in this area could have a negative impact on the expected resumption of our partnership under Cotonou, but early indications [for example, the government's signing of a local cease-fire agreement with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan] were "encouraging," it added.

The extension of a two-month old cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region is essential if the Nuba people, particularly in rebel-held areas, are to move out of economic isolation, and benefit from long-term development opportunities, according to the results of a UN-led multi-agency assessment mission to the area. 
"The defining constraint on virtually all agricultural and related activities, and a realisation of the potential of the region and its people, is the civil war which has endured in the area from the late 1980s," the office of the UN Coordinator for Sudan, Roger Guarda, stated in a report on the rapid-needs assessment, conducted over a three-week period in January.
The war has had the effect of restricting freedom of movement in the Nuba region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, forcing communities away from the fertile plains into more mountainous areas under the control of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and into "economic isolation", the report said.
Complementary multi-agency and multi-sectoral assessment missions were sent to both government- and rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains, and included representatives from the Sudanese government's Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other relief organisations.
In the areas controlled by the rebel movement, an "emerging cycle of impoverishment" was evident, partly due to people's inability to access good agricultural land due to fear of abduction, rape or murder, according to the assessment report. 
In government-controlled areas, there were an estimated 170,000 people living in what were, in effect, displaced persons camps, it said. Both access to farming land and pastoral practices (based on freedom of movement) had been significantly restricted, with people's capacity to maintain their livelihood support systems "badly eroded", it added.
About 1.13 million people live in the 80,000 square kilometres of the Nuba Mountains region. The mountains themselves, rugged granite outcrops up to 1,000m high, constitute roughly one-third of the area, rising above extensive and fertile agricultural plains, which once produced a significant food surplus for other parts of Sudan.
Representatives of the Sudanese government and SPLM/A-Nuba signed a cease-fire agreement in January, to last for an initial period of six months. A Joint Military Commission (JMC) designed to oversee the cease-fire has been established and teams of international monitors are due to be dispatched to the ground in the coming weeks.
Although the Nuba people were more than capable of producing their own food, and even a surplus, they now lack essential social support services in health, water and education, as well as agricultural and livestock extension services, according to the Nuba needs assessment.
A further, serious constraint on virtually all economic activity and social services throughout the Nuba Mountains region was the almost complete absence of adequate arterial and feeder roads, the mission report stated. Road traffic was obliged to use a network of rough dirt and sand tracks running through the plains areas and the mountains, with the latter being now virtually impassable to traffic because of the civil war and the existence of land mines.
"A fundamental priority for a cost-effective relief and rehabilitation programme will thus be immediate attention to this run-down road network, both in the short and long terms," the UN report stated. Education, health and nutrition, and water and sanitation were also all important areas for intervention, it said.
The overall situation with respect to education in the region was one of "chronic shortage in every conceivable respect", according to the assessment. School structures were generally very basic and inadequate, with the situation being worse outside the towns and in the SPLM/A-controlled areas. It was estimated that, of just over 500 schools in government-controlled areas and 92 in SPLM/A-controlled areas, at least 60 percent required rehabilitation. 
"The result is a very low enrolment of children in school (especially girls), poor attendance and high drop-out rates," the report stated.
The most common diseases in the Nuba Mountains region were found to be malaria, diarrhoea, and acute respiratory infections.
Awareness of HIV/AIDS and its effects was "poor" among the general public, but also among health workers. "Little or no sensitisation or training seems to be available for health workers, with the result that they tend not to practise any preventive measures", the report said. In SPLM/A-controlled areas, there was only one doctor per 123,000 people.
Health and nutrition needs identified in the report included: the development of capacity for training health workers; rehabilitation and construction of health-care facilities; the promotion and implementation of an expanded programme of immunisation; and the provision of basic drugs, medicines and nutritional supplements.
Access to safe drinking water was also difficult in many areas, particularly in the dry season, which normally runs from November until May, according to the assessment report.
In particular, the displacement of communities away from the plains into SPLM/A-controlled areas in the hills had increased the time taken for women and girls to collect water. Some women had to walk for up to eight hours in a round-trip to collect water during the dry season, it said. 
If the free movement of civilians and goods, including humanitarian assistance, could occur through the whole Nuba Mountains region, the worrying situation could turn around very quickly, the report said. 
"However, it will be important to remember that for the people in the SPLM/A-controlled areas in particular, there will need to be a time of confidence-building for them to believe in peace. Only then will they feel safe enough to venture from their mountain-top homes and back onto the fertile plains," it added.

The European Commission (EC) recently announced its decision to support a major programme, endorsed by both the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), to tackle the serious problem of land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the country.
The programme "will involve cross-line activities, and constitute a very strong message for peace" by allowing civil society to build up an initiative to deal with land mines even as the country is still at war, according to the EC.
The government has signed, but not yet ratified, the Ottawa Treaty against land-mine use, while the SPLM/A signed an agreement on a total ban on antipersonnel land mines throughout territories under its control in October 2001.
The main objective of the new mine action programme is "to begin the process which will facilitate a wide-scale national mine action programme in peace time", according to the EC. The initiative would involve applying internationally recognised standards, and developing cross-line contacts and cooperation, it stated last week. It has committed 1.5 million euros (some US $1.31 million) for an initial one-year effort, to run to February 2003. 
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has also become involved recently in assessing how it could assist in Sudan, according to humanitarian sources. The unit had been very wary of trying to survey or lift mines in a war situation (especially when minefields have been laid a long time ago, and have not been mapped or had their boundaries delineated), but the apparent cross-line commitment to tackling land mines had encouraged it to become involved, they said.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which has been engaged in land-mine awareness activities in Sudan, said on Thursday it welcomed the EC-supported initiative, as it had seen the terrible toll of land mines among women and children.
"We're very glad to see the situation being addressed in a serious manner," Martin Dawes, the UNICEF Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) spokesman, told IRIN on Thursday. "We know of the injuries and deaths that occur from land mines and discarded ordnance, and we welcome this attention; something has to be done about this problem."
Just recently, Dawes said, he had heard of a teacher and two pupils being seriously injured in three separate incidents while tending a school garden in Maridi, Western Equatoria. It was high time that a serious initiative was undertaken to survey, map and hopefully remove mines - in addition to the mine-awareness activities that were already taking place, he added.
Felipe Donoso, head of office for Sudan at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Nairobi, also welcomed the initiative, saying that beyond agreement on no longer laying antipersonnel mines, it was also necessary to remove those already in use, because they violated international humanitarian law and the laws of war. "Most victims of antipersonnel mines in Sudan, as elsewhere, are civilians and not actors in the war," Donoso told IRIN. 
The new cross-lines mining programme being developed was only possible because "there is a common ground between major parties to the conflict - the government and SPLM/A - in recognising the humanitarian and economic damage being inflicted by land mines," according to the EC.
National nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) from both government-controlled and non-government- controlled parts of the country are set to implement the programme, with the support of Landmine Action, a British-based consortium of NGOs, and Oxfam GB.
Some 32 mainly Sudanese groups participating in the programme are grouped under the Sudan Campaign to Ban Landmines (SCBL), which operates in northern Sudan, and Operation Save Innocent Lives (OSIL) in southern Sudan.
The programme intends to build a strong information network extending to all current and past war-affected areas, said EC delegate Xavier Marchal in a press conference in Khartoum, adding that this would "act as a conduit to report all incidents where people or animals fall victim to land mines".
Incoming information about land-mine incidents will be fed through local focal points and field officers to two main operational centres, one in Khartoum and one in the SPLM/A controlled south, according to the EC. The programme is also intended to respond to the immediate needs of land-mine victims and to mount limited survey, marking and clearance operations when the opportunity arises. 
Activities are initially to be concentrated in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, where a local cease-fire between the government and SPLM/A Nuba is in effect, according to sources in Khartoum.
Mines have been called "the perfect soldiers": they are cheap to produce and do not need maintenance; once they have been placed, they stand guard without needing sleep, food, water or drugs; and they never miss - however unintended their target.
Land mines, or at least antipersonnel mines, would be better depicted as terrorists, not soldiers, according to Donoso of the ICRC. "They are terrorists because they don't make a distinction between enemy fighters and civilians - women, kids, old women - in clear violation of international law," he told IRIN on Thursday. 
Africa suffers from an epidemic of land mines and UXO, and is the most heavily mined continent in the world, with at least 40 million land mines, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It describes Sudan as being among the most "severely infested countries" in a continent where land mines kill, injure and disable over 12,000 people per year.
There are between 500,000 and two million land mines in Sudan, laid by both the government and rebel groups, according to considered estimates. Mining continues to occur in the south of the country - already particularly affected, especially around towns - according to the Red Cross Federation. 
The US-based Human Rights Watch reported in its World Report 2001, that the Ottawa Treaty, signed by Sudan in 1997, remained unratified, and that the government had not destroyed antipersonnel land mines as required. It also continued to use land mines in some areas, such as the eastern front, the report added. 
The government denied, at an international conference on land mines in Nicaragua in September 2001, that it had used mines recently, but spoke of their continued use by the SPLA. Khartoum gave as its reason for the delay in ratifying the Ottawa treaty the ongoing war in Sudan, but said, despite limited resources, it had already started implementing the agreement. [http://www.icbl.org/news/2001/96.php] 
During an interview with IRIN in January, Muhammad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, also dismissed claims that the Khartoum government had been laying land mines in southern Sudan. "If they are accusing us of carrying out offensives against innocent civilians, it is rubbish to even speak about land mines. Land mines are defensive weapons, and are not used when carrying out an offensive," he said.
The government of Sudan, as cited by the Red Cross Federation, estimates that mine accidents have resulted in more than 700,000 amputees and an equal number of deaths. Most parts of Sudan, particularly in the south, lack medical services and rehabilitation centres, and have limited equipment and qualified personnel to conduct basic life-saving procedures. 
Mines are typically deployed in fields, near villages and towns, on roads, around wells, schools and health clinics, so that - besides killing and disabling individuals - they damage communities by preventing land cultivation, blocking passage to safe drinking water, limiting humanitarian access, closing roads and isolating villages and towns.
The new mine-action network in Sudan would seek to access information related to arable and pastoral land which is unused due to the actual or presumed presence of minefields, the EC stated last week. 
Pastoralist communities are most affected by the scourge of land mines in Sudan, primarily because of the migratory range of nomadic pastoralists across the major areas of conflict - and thus the main minefields - in search of water and grazing, according to humanitarian sources.
Casualties from mines and UXO currently occur at a rate of at least 10 per day in southern Sudan, peaking well over that figure whenever the government conducts aerial bombing runs on civilian population centres, according to one NGO. That figure would greatly increase in proportion to the number of returning refugees and internally displaced people returning to mine-infested areas, it added.
The pastoralist economy and culture is central to Sudanese society and, "one may realistically assume, great harm done to pastoralism is also great harm done to Sudan," it said. In that light, the new mine action should include pastoralist groups and emphasise the need to report all mine incidents, including those involving animals, it added. 
The current Sudan initiative was notable for its depoliticisation of the issue of land mines, in that it is cross-line - endorsed by both major parties to the conflict and does not intend to embarrass the forces responsible for using them, but rather to emphasise the indiscrimate nature of the damage they cause, according to sources familiar with the scale of the problem.
Even after a sustained peace, it will take many years to clear Sudan of land mines, they told IRIN. However, efforts such as the current initiative could speed up that process by identifying now in advance of the lives being lost and destroyed, the livestock killed, the massive areas closed to economic uses - as well as the needs and priorities for mine action. 
There was an urgent need to extend the availability of medical and prosthetic facilities in rural areas, because it was in these places that most injuries and deaths occurred, largely unheralded, the sources said.
Beyond that, all parties to the conflict (including militias and locally recruited forces) must be persuaded to stop the use of land mines, and especially antipersonnel mines. "The continued deployment of these weapons is an abuse, and an act of long-term destruction which must be considered a crime against the people of Sudan," they added. 

The United States says it has secured agreement from the government of Sudan and southern rebels to ensure the protection of civilians against military attack.
"We now have an agreement... that will permit, we hope, more secure humanitarian activity in Sudan, and allow discussions on the way forward in the peace process," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at a press briefing on Monday.
According to Boucher, agreement was reached with the Sudanese government last week, and the deal was endorsed by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) over the weekend.
The agreement is to be monitored by two teams of monitors: one, for the north, in Khartoum, and the other in southern Sudan, probably near the SPLM/A base in the town of Rumbek, Lakes (Buhayrat) State, United Press International (UPI) quoted State Department officials as saying.
"The Sudanese government has agreed to an international monitoring mechanism to assure that the agreement is complied with, and that will go forward as well," Boucher said. 
The agreement opens the way for the US to resume peace discussions with Khartoum, which Washington suspended in February following an attack by a government of Sudan helicopter gunship on a relief centre at the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), in which at least 24 people were killed (more than 47 met their deaths, according to some reports).
The Sudanese government had offered an explanation and apology for the attack, and efforts were now being made to prevent similar incidents, according to Boucher.
He said last week that the US had received a letter from Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il in which the Sudanese government acknowledged the tragedy at Bieh, and indicated concrete steps it intended to take to ensure there was no repeat - "including moving the approval process for all military flights to the Khartoum military command". 
An undertaking to end attacks on civilians was one of four confidence-building measures proposed by the US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, in November. The other three concerned: the creation of zones and times of tranquillity (throughout Sudan) in which humanitarian assistance could be offered to vulnerable populations; an end to the taking of slaves; and an internationally monitored cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan. 
Bringing an end to attacks on civilians has proved to be the most contentious of Danforth's proposals, with the Sudanese government saying it would only end such attacks if the rebel SPLM/A suspended its own military activity. The rebel movement has repeatedly indicated its unwillingness to accept a global cease-fire in the absence of a comprehensive peace settlement.
According to the Sudanese government, the scope of the US proposal has now been widened to include all forms of attacks on civilians by both the government and rebels (rather than focusing on aerial bombing, carried out by government forces).
"The proposal is a comprehensive one that covers protection from war-related harm, of not only civilians but also civilian installations and other civilian aspects," AFP news agency on Sunday quoted Sudanese Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Mutrif Siddiq as saying. 
According to Boucher, the agreement on attacks on civilians meant the Sudanese government was now making progress on all four of Danforth's proposals. 
"It is the fourth point that he [Danforth] was looking for agreement on. So that completes his initial effort to get an agreement on those four points and to monitor their implementation," Boucher said.

Delegates at last week's Sudan Ecumenical Forum in the UK capital, London, warned on Thursday that any peace settlement in Sudan "must be just and lasting and not a quick-fix solution".
Delegates called for pressure on the government of Sudan to put an end to bombings and other attacks on civilians, a suspension of oil production, and recognition of the right to self-determination of the southern Sudanese and other marginalised people in Sudan, according to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD). 
"There are currently the conditions to achieve a peace deal in Sudan and no reason why we should not try," Clare Short, British Secretary of State for International Development, told delegates. "It is fantastically important that we try to end this war," CAFOD quoted her as saying.
The conference, from 4 to 6 March, brought together religious leaders from Sudan and their worldwide church partners in an effort to promote dialogue and "find solutions to the problems that lie at the heart of Sudan's conflict", according to Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund, co-sponsors of the event.
The forum was an effort to ensure that the voice of southern Sudanese civil society is heard more clearly, according to the three charities. "Any peace agreement that is reached without taking into account the views of the ordinary people will not be sustainable," said Rob Rees, CAFOD programme officer for Sudan.
Attacks on civilians, oil production and self-determination were the "three key issues" raised at the meeting, with delegates making it clear that the UK Government and international partners must address these if a just and lasting peace were to be achieved, Christian Aid reported. 
Firstly, it said, the churches of southern Sudan had systematically documented bomb attacks on civilians by the government of Sudan since 1999, and recent reports had revealed an increase in attacks on civilians using helicopter gunships. 
Delegates had also confirmed the Sudanese churches' position that "oil exploration must be suspended until there is a just and sustainable peace and agreement has been reached for the equitable sharing of resources," the nongovernmental organisation stated. Research, particularly in the last two years, had shown that the oil business had aggravated the suffering of civilians, especially in oil-producing areas, it said. 
Thirdly, the Sudanese church delegates called on all their political leaders "to ensure that any peace settlement includes the rights of the southern Sudanese and other marginalised people to determine for themselves how they should be governed", according to Christian Aid. 
Delegates at the London forum also reaffirmed the churches' position that slavery and abduction were the result of the ongoing Sudanese conflict, and must therefore be ended through a political settlement, CAFOD reported.

The European Union, recently urged by a southern grouping to reconsider its aid policy on Sudan in light of a government attack on a food relief centre in western Upper Nile on 20 February, said on Monday that development assistance had not been restored to the country and that conditionality had been built into proposals to do so. 
European Union (EU) proposals on the progressive normalisation of relations and restoration of development assistance would take place in parallel with the continuing EU-Sudan political dialogue, according to European Commission Delegate to Sudan, Xavier Marchal.
Marchal also referred to an EC statement on the matter, which stated clearly that "future developments are dependent on continuing good progress in the political dialogue begun [with the Sudanese government] in 1999", and that these would be reassessed later this year. The European Commission is the secretariat of the European Union. 
A grouping of eight southern Sudanese politicians recently urged the EU to reassess its aid policy in light of the 20 February helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre in Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State) on 20 February, as well as the general human rights situation in Sudan, according to news reports.
In a statement signed by Joseph Ukel, head of the Union of Sudan African Parties (USAP), former Sudanese Vice-President Abel Alier and six other politicians, it said the 20 February attack and other such incidents had made Sudan "exceedingly well known for its bad human rights record", Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on 2 March. 
After the Bieh attack, in which at least 24 people were killed (and more than 47 met their deaths, according to some reports), the US government announced it was suspending peace discussions with Khartoum until it offered a satisfactory explanation. 
The EU also expressed its deep concern and called on Khartoum to provide a full explanation and urgently uphold its agreements with the United Nations on the humanitarian operation in Sudan. 
The government expressed its regret for the incident, which, it said, was a mistake. Although it was government policy to ensure that civilians were not targets, "unforeseen casualties happen to innocent civilians" in war situations, it added.
The Bieh atrocity was special in that it followed "the recent certificate of good character given by the EU to the government of Sudan", AFP quoted the southern politicians as saying. 
After 11 years during which formal EU development assistance to Sudan was suspended due to peace, governance and human rights concerns, the EC announced on 31 January that it intended to embark on a progressive normalisation of relations.
The Commission would now begin the process of working with Sudan to prepare a country strategy for assistance, at the same time as political dialogue with Khartoum continued "to address enduring concerns about the internal armed conflict in the country", it said. 
The Sudanese government had been invited to work with the EC to determine the programming of European Development Fund (EDF) support, and the measures to be undertaken in the fields of concern which had led to the 1990 suspension: human rights, democracy, rule of law and progress on achieving peace, it added. 
Following commitments given by Khartoum during a high-level EC visit in December, Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Poul Nielson announced that preparations would begin this year to resume normal relations under the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. 
The EC also announced on 23 January its adoption of a 'Global Plan' of humanitarian aid to Sudan, worth 17 million euros (almost US $15 million) as a measure of European solidarity with the innocent people caught up in the ongoing tragedy of the Sudanese civil war. "The plight of the Sudanese people is seldom in the headlines nowadays, but we have a duty to stay the course," said Nielson.
However, the eight southern politicians maintained in their statement that it was "known by all except the EU governments that [Khartoum] has not changed its plans and aggressive intentions against the south, and its oppressive and ethnic-cleansing policies", AFP reported.
Within the Cotonou framework, two grant allocations totalling some 155 million euros (about $136 million) are envisaged for Sudan from the 9th European Development Fund, according to the EC statement of 31 January. 
For the next five years, 135 million euros (about $118.4 million) have been allocated for development operations, with a view to reducing poverty, it said; another 20 million euros (about
$17.5 million) is potentially available for emergency assistance, debt relief initiatives and measures to mitigate the adverse effects of instability in export earnings. 
The EU's decision to plan closer ties with Sudan without signposting clear expectations on Khartoum's commitment to peace was recently decried by John Prendergast, co-director for Africa of the International Crisis Group (ICG). 
The EU had "shot its bolt" by announcing that Sudan could expect to join Cotonou, work towards normalised relations and secure access to debt relief (something for which Khartoum was desperate - having a heavy debt overhang as a result of forward spending against anticipated oil revenues), Prendergast told a recent briefing in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
In this regard, the EU had shown "unbelievably bad timing" and appeared to have indicated that it would tread its own path, when what was needed was a serious, coordinated international effort "to create leverage for a serious peace process", Prendergast said.
The EU would do better to address the key issue - a comprehensive peace - and focus its constructive engagement with Khartoum on "peace process benchmarks" to achieve that, rather than on individual issues which did not necessarily contribute to that overarching goal, he added. 
Prendergast had it wrong in relation to the EU and Sudan, because the European statement had outlined conditionalities, the EU was still engaged in a political dialogue with the Khartoum government and had not restored its development assistance, Xavier Marchal informed IRIN on Monday. 
For its part, the European Commission stated on 31 January that the amounts in development assistance envisaged for Sudan were "indicative" and not "entitlements", and that they could be revised subject to Sudan's needs and performance. Those figures would also be "substantially
increased by releasing Sudan's unused allocations from previous funds", it said. 
The EC would not be pursuing the normalisation of relations with Sudan in isolation but in parallel with continuing political dialogue, the progress of which would be evaluated by the end of this year, it said. 
"Disappointing results in this area could have a negative impact on the expected resumption of our partnership under Cotonou, but early indications [for example, the government's signing of a local cease-fire agreement with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan] were "encouraging," it added.

A broad coalition of Sudanese civil society groups and indigenous nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) this week called on the United Nations Security Council to create "safe havens" in southern Sudan in order to protect civilians from what it called a government "scorched earth policy".
The call came from the Federation of Sudanese Civil Society Organisations (FOSCO) in a statement issued jointly with the New Sudanese Indigenous NGO Network (NESI) on Tuesday, 5 March.
The safe havens should include all areas of Sudan south of parallel 12 latitude, according to the organisations, who also called on the oil companies working in western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), a key oil production area, to cease extraction until peace was achieved in Sudan.
FOSCO is a coalition of more than 20 civil society and NGO relief, rehabilitation, advocacy, development and human rights organisations. NESI describes itself as an indigenous civilian body working to safeguard the rights of civilians in southern Sudan by performing a watchdog role. [see http://www.nesinetwork.org/]
The civil society groups also called for a UN Security Council resolution imposing an immediate oil sales embargo on the government of Sudan, until such time as peace had been negotiated.
FOSCO also urged members of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to restrain the Khartoum government from carrying out "its scorched earth policies".
In their statement, the civil society groups condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the 20 February government helicopter gunship attack on a humanitarian relief centre in Bieh, western Upper Nile. This attack had been publicised because there were international relief workers on the ground at the time, but most went unreported, they said.
Their statement alleged that more than 47 people (10 men, 12 women and 25 children) had been killed in the incident, with many more wounded. Previous reports have set the known number of dead at 24, while allowing for the possibility that many more were killed.
The government of Sudan expressed its regret for the Bieh attack, saying it was a mistake which occurred in the context of an escalation in military activity against oil-extraction facilities by southern rebels.
According to the civil society statement, "tens of thousands of people have been sent on the move, fearing daily attacks and the hovering of helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers".
Unwarranted attacks on civilians such as that on Bieh - which occurred barely a week after a similar incident at a food distribution site in Akuem, Bahr al-Ghazal - were "taking place around the clock", the statement added.
It complained of the denial of humanitarian access to victims of war, including the denial of flight permission for aid flights, the bombing of civilian targets and alleged government use of militia forces to facilitate attacks on civilian populations.
The civil society groups said they remained convinced that an end to the war in Sudan could only come through "honest and good-faith negotiation" that guaranteed the right to self-determination of the people of south Sudan.

A young woman convicted of adultery by a Sharia court in northern Nigeria will be buried up to her neck and stoned to death unless pressure is put on the authorities in her state to commute her sentence. 
Her case transcends a personal drama for Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, who referred to it in an address at the closing ceremony of the Third African Development Forum (ADF III).  "The status of women in the 21st century cannot be the same as it was in the 15th or 16th century," he said, referring both to northern Nigeria and to Sudan, where such punishments are also meted out in the name of the Sharia or Islamic law, 
"We must not substitute a theocratic dictatorship for a military one," Soyinka said in reference to Nigeria, where military rule that ended in 1999 was succeeded in the north by the emergence of states ruled by the Sharia. "This projected [African] union must come out boldly in favour of secular rule as a condition for membership."
Religion and state power, an issue that has fuelled war in Sudan and division in Nigeria, was not discussed during ADF III. However, 1,000 participants in the forum, devoted attention to the issue of peer pressure - the responsibility of members of the incoming African Union to use sanctions such as suspension against governments that do not respect constitutionality.
'Defining priorities for regional integration' was the focus of this year's ADF, an annual forum organised by the UN Economic Commission for Africa  (ECA) on major issues facing the continent. The theme of ADF III was chosen in connection with the birth of the African Union that replaces the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in July 2002.
While the OAU provided an institutional framework for liberation against colonialism and the protection of new sovereign states when it was formed four decades ago, the African Union is aimed at creating a single political and economic space in Africa, Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Friday.
The Union is "a political, economic and social project" which "aims to create a democratic space across Africa, to promote economic development, and to reflect a common African identity".
At least 1,000 representatives of governments, civil society and regional institutions ended the six-day conference on Friday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, with a consensus declaration on continental integration to be used by the African Union.

The United States government has said it is moving closer to an agreement with Sudan to end the targeting of civilians in the country's 19-year civil war.
"The Sudanese government has indicated that it will agree to a verification mechanism that will monitor and prevent attacks against civilians. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army [SPLM/A] has not yet agreed to this point," Richard Boucher, US State Department spokesman, said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
SPLM/A representatives were unavailable for comment on the announcement.
A statement by Sudanese presidential peace adviser, Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, released on Monday, said the Khartoum administration had accepted an amended US proposal on attacks on civilians, saying it was "more balanced and inclusive" than the initial proposal made by the US peace envoy, John Danforth. 
The scope of the US proposal had been widened beyond the issue of bombing attacks on civilians to include shelling, the taking of civilians as human shields, and the use of civilian installations for military purposes, according to Atabani's statement.
Although the original US proposal on ending attacks on civilians (one of four confidence-building measures suggested by Danforth in November) highlighted the problem of bombing attacks on civilian targets, the envoy himself has said that the proposed verification mechanisms would not be limited to bombing. 
The US had previously suspended peace discussions with Khartoum following a Sudanese government helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre in the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile, on 20 February, in which 24 people were killed.
According to Boucher, an explanation and an apology for the attack had been offered by Khartoum, and efforts were now being made to prevent similar incidents.
Boucher said the US had received a letter from Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il in which he acknowledged the tragedy at Bieh, and indicated concrete steps the government intended to take to ensure there was no repeat of such attacks, "including moving the approval process for all military flights to the Khartoum military command". 
The agreement, if signed, would include "an international verification mechanism to deal with reports of attacks on civilians in contravention of the Geneva Convention", United Press International (UPI) quoted Robert Oakley, a former US ambassador and adviser to Danforth, as saying on Monday
Meanwhile, a team of three international military experts arrived in Khartoum on Wednesday to oversee a locally agreed cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan, news agencies reported.
Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Thursday that the three observers, who comprised an American and two Europeans, were the vanguard of an International Monitoring Unit (IMU), which would eventually number up to 15 military and civilian personnel.
Under the Nuba agreement, signed between representatives of the Sudanese government and SPLM/A-Nuba in Switzerland in January, a Joint Military Commission (JMC) and an IMU are due to be established to oversee compliance with the terms of the agreement. 
According to the text of the agreement, the IMU would report to the JMC regarding "verification, control and monitoring of the cessation of hostilities and subsequent disengagement". 
A cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains was another of the four US confidence-building proposals made by Danforth in November. The remaining two proposals concerned: the creation of zones and times of tranquillity (throughout Sudan) in which humanitarian assistance could be offered to vulnerable populations; and an end to the taking of slaves. 
In his briefing on Tuesday, Boucher emphasised the importance of international monitors in efforts to protect civilians from military attack.
"Sadly, the history of Sudan is strewn with agreements and commitments that have never been implemented," he said. "The only way to break this vicious cycle is for the parties to the conflict to live up to their word and for international monitors to conform compliance on the ground."

Despite some improvements, the Sudanese government's record on human rights remained a serious concern throughout last year, the US State Department reported this week. 
"The government's human rights record remained extremely poor, and although there were some improvements in a few areas, it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses," the US State Department stated in its Sudan country report on human rights practices for 2001.
The continued imposition of an official state of emergency in the country had restricted some basic civil liberties, including freedom of expression and association, the report said. 
Although the Sudanese constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention without charge, the state of emergency had superseded these provisions, and the government continued to use arbitrary arrest and detention in 2001. "Critics argue that the state of emergency decree effectively allows indefinite detention of persons without trial and does not require formal charges during the period of detention," it noted.
Human Rights Watch said in February that "emergency tribunals" set up under the state of emergency had been used to impose inhuman sentences such as death by stoning and amputations.
The US State Department reported on Monday that there had been seven reported death sentences handed down by emergency tribunals during 2001, including the sentencing in December to amputation and subsequent execution of a man for armed banditry.
When it was originally imposed in 1999, the state of emergency had had the effect of suspending the constitution and disbanding parliament - two days before it was due to vote on a bill designed to reduce the powers of President Umar Hasan al-Bashir.
Despite being imposed for an initial period of three months, the state of emergency has been in effect continuously since December 1999, and was extended for an additional 12 months at the end of 2001.
According to Monday's US State Department report, Sudanese government-controlled security forces were responsible for numerous, serious human rights abuses last year, including the beating of suspected opponents.
On 16 March 2001, security forces reportedly arrested at his home Hasan Umar Bul Reish, an officer in the opposition Popular National Congress (PNC), beat him in front of his family, and took him to security offices, where they continued to beat him, the report stated. Reish was later taken to the central police hospital, where he died of his injuries the following day. No reported action had been taken on the case by the end of 2001, it added
Rebel groups had also continued to commit numerous and serious abuses, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) had continued to violate citizens' rights, despite its claim that it was implementing a 1994 decision to assert civil authority in areas under its control, the report stated.
"The SPLM/A was responsible for extrajudicial killings, beatings, rapes, arbitrary detentions, and forced conscription of boys," it said.
Although the government had "severely restricted" freedom of speech and of the press, some improvements in this area were observed in 2001. In December, the government announced the lifting of official press censorship on all newspapers, and internal security censors were no longer stationed in publishing houses to approve copies of articles, Monday's report stated.
However, the Press Council continued to have the authority to suspend publications that contained articles considered objectionable by the government, it added.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International complained in January that the Sudanese authorities were "using excessive fines and unfair and arbitrary trials to curtail freedom of expression", especially that of the Khartoum Monitor newspaper. [http://web.amnesty.org/]
It expressed concern that the offence of "propagation of false news" under Section 66 of the Sudanese Penal Code, punishable by imprisonment for up to six months or a fine of an unspecified amount, could be interpreted to include any criticism of the government - a state of affairs which constituted a restriction of the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday that there has been a partial lifting of restrictions on humanitarian relief flights in southern Sudan. 
A WFP spokeswoman, Laura Melo, told IRIN that the Sudanese government had removed an effective one-week blanket ban on flights in western Upper Nile (Unity, or Wahdah State) following discussions with UN officials. 
However, newly imposed restrictions on 19 specific locations in southern Sudan, some of them in western Upper Nile, were scheduled to remain in place, also for one week, Melo said. UN officials were continuing discussions with Sudanese government authorities in an attempt to lift these restrictions, she added. 
The western Upper Nile region is the site of many of Sudan's oilfields, and has been subject to an escalation of fighting between government and rebel forces in recent weeks. 
Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the umbrella operation for UN and nongovernmental agencies operating in Sudan, each month submits a request to the Sudanese government for humanitarian access to a number of locations in war-torn southern Sudan. 
There were currently a total of 44 locations, including the 19 locations under discussion, in southern Sudan which the government of Sudan had placed off-limits to aid agencies, Melo said. 
The Sudanese government said the additional, temporary restrictions had been imposed to help the government verify the locations of aid deliveries in the south of the country, the Associated Press news agency (AP) reported on Saturday. 

The Sudanese government said on Monday that it had accepted an amended proposal from the United States aimed at stopping the targeting of civilians in the country's 19-year civil war. 
"The new version is addressing the whole issue of protecting civilians instead of focusing only on aerial bombardment," said Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, the Sudanese presidential peace adviser, in a statement. 
The scope of the US proposal has been widened beyond the issue of bombing attacks to include shelling, the taking of civilians as human shields and the use of civilian installations for military purposes, according to Atabani's statement, released by the Sudanese embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. 
"The [new] proposal is therefore more balanced and inclusive," the statement added. 
While humanitarian agencies, media groups and southern rebels have frequently reported government bombing attacks on civilians, Khartoum says that rebel groups - the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in particular - are guilty of launching artillery attacks against civilian targets. 
Robert Oakley, a former US ambassador and adviser to the US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, said an agreement on protection of civilians had been reached with the Sudanese government, but that the papers had not yet been signed, United Press International (UPI) reported on Monday. 
The agreement, if signed, would include "an international verification mechanism to deal with reports of attacks on civilians in contravention of the Geneva Convention", UPI quoted Oakley as saying. 
The US proposal on ending attacks on civilians - one of four confidence-building measures suggested by Danforth in November - highlighted the problem of bombing attacks on civilian targets, but the envoy himself has said that the proposed verification mechanisms will not be limited to bombing. 
Danforth called, in a press conference in Nairobi on 17 November, for the "cessation of bombing, artillery attacks and so on - helicopter gunship attacks - on innocent people, on civilians". 
He stated in an article in the St Louis Post newspaper (in the US) in February that he had managed to reach formal agreement with Khartoum on: a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access in the Nuba Mountains; zones and times of tranquillity to allow large-scale immunisations against polio, Guinea worm and rinderpest; and an undertaking to end the taking of slaves. 
However, he said, he had not been able to reach formal agreement with Khartoum on measures to prevent attacks on civilians. 
Following a Sudanese government helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre in the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile, on 20 February, the US said it was suspending peace discussions with Khartoum until it offered an explanation for the incident. 
Khartoum later expressed its regrets, saying the attack was a mistake which occurred in the context of an escalation in military activity against oil extraction facilities by southern rebels. 
Danforth is expected to submit a report to US President George W. Bush within the next few weeks on the feasibility of the US taking up an active role in efforts to bring an end to Sudan's civil war. 
The reaction of the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A to the four US "tests of good faith" would represent a key part of that report, giving a clear indication of the seriousness of their intent to work for peace, Danforth said in November. 
[see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15561] 
"If they don't want peace, they will tell us by inaction, or by sabotage of these ideas, or by saying one thing and doing another - which is as bad," he added. 

The United Nations system on Monday confirmed that it was in discussions with the Sudanese government in an effort to reverse restrictions on humanitarian flights in parts of southern Sudan.
"We are engaged in discussions within the UN system to get a review of this decision," the World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman, Laura Melo, told IRIN.
According to Melo, the WFP - operating within Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the umbrella operation for UN and nongovernmental agencies operating in Sudan - is, on average, denied humanitarian access to 26 locations in southern Sudan by Khartoum.
Despite the UN's request for access at the beginning of March, however, an additional 19 locations had been placed off-limits to aid agencies for one week only, Melo added. 
OLS each month submits a request to the Sudanese government for humanitarian access to a number of locations in war-torn southern Sudan.
Denial of access could prevent some 170,000 vulnerable people from receiving food aid in the 19 additional locations to which access is denied, according to Melo. The extra denials meant that food aid could be denied to a total of 345,000 people in 45 locations, she added.
Many of the additional 19 locations are situated in western Upper Nile (Unity, or Wahdah State), which is the site of many of southern Sudan's oilfields and has been subject to an escalation of fighting between government and rebel forces in recent weeks. 
The deaths of 24 people in an a government helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre at the village of Bieh in western Upper Nile on 20 February raised fears that growing violence could be related to conflict over the region's lucrative oil resources. See Irinnews. 
The Bieh attack was widely condemned by the international and humanitarian communities, and the US government said it was suspending peace talks with Khartoum until it offered an explanation of the incident. 
It was unusual that OLS had been denied access to the 19 additional locations for just one week, rather than the more usual month-long ban, Melo told IRIN. The government said it would renegotiate flight access to these locations after this one week, she added.
Melo said many of the people of western Upper Nile were dependent on food aid, largely as a result of insecurity in the area.
"We are concerned for the safety of the people of Unity State. They are frequently on the move [displaced] because of fighting," she added.
Other sources told IRIN on Monday that the government could be denying access to locations where they thought there was likely to be an increase in fighting in the near future.
The Sudanese government has said that the additional, temporary restrictions have been imposed to help the government verify the locations of aid deliveries in the south of the country, the Associated Press news agency (AP) reported on Saturday.
"You know we are dealing with some 180 airstrips and locations all over the south. We have asked the UN and are working with them to provide all specific locations and [make sure we all] have the same maps," AP quoted the head of the government's Humanitarian Aid Commission, Sulaf al-Din Salih, as saying.

An estimated 700 Ugandan soldiers rescued some 80 civilians who were captured by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in a weekend attack on a market in northern Uganda, according to a Ugandan army official.
"The UPDF [Uganda People's Defence Force] pursued the rebels 10 or 20 kilometres inside the Sudan, freed 80 civilians, and have now returned to Uganda," the army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN on Thursday.
About 300 LRA rebels on Saturday 23 February attacked a local defence unit detachment in the Agoro Market area of Lamwo County, Kitgum District, and kidnapped around 100 people-mostly men between 15 and 25 years of age. Four people, two civilians and two soldiers, werereportedly killed in the attack.
Bantariza confirmed reports that the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, had been involved in the incident, and claimed Kony's presence indicated the rebel group was now in desperate need of reinforcements. "The whole of last year they were not able to make any incursions into the north and have become desperate. The weekend incident was a kind of suicide attack," Bantariza said.
The US in December included the LRA - as well as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) operating in western and south-western Uganda - on its "Terrorist Exclusion List" under the US Patriot Act.
"They are now on the terrorist list. They know the United States, Sudan, and everyone else is against them," Bantariza said.
Kony has led the LRA in its guerrilla-style war against Ugandan government forces and the civilian population of northern Uganda since the late 1980s. Operating from bases in southern Sudan, and supported until recently by Sudan, it has waged a campaign of terror - brutalising, killing, and looting, destroying homes, and abducting people, particularly children, to act as fighters, sex slaves and porters for looted goods.
However, it has become increasingly isolated in recent months, following the improvement of Ugandan-Sudanese diplomatic relations, as well as the Sudanese government's announcement last year that it had ended its support for the rebel group.
According to Bantariza, the Ugandan army has been cooperating with Sudanese authorities to facilitate the pursuit of LRA rebels inside Sudan following incidents such as the one at the Agoro Market. "We are in contact with Sudan. We are cooperating with Sudan," he said.

A group of leading international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on Friday called on the international and humanitarian communities to agree upon "clear and consistent disincentives" for warring parties who commit abuses against civilians and humanitarian aid agencies in Sudan.
"Precise benchmarks for action in both cases should be set and agreed upon by all the relevant international actors," according to the statement released by some 13 NGOs working in both north and south Sudan.
The NGOs urged the United Nations, European Union, the governments of the United States, European and other concerned countries, and all other NGOs to "relay a clear and consistent message to the Government of Sudan and other warring parties that any attacks against innocent civilians and humanitarian facilities are unacceptable."
The statement followed a government helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre at the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah State), on 20 February, in which at least 24 people were reportedly killed.
Following the attack on Bieh, which took place during a distribution of food aid to some 10,000 people, the US government announced it was suspending peace discussions with Khartoum until a satisfactory explanation was offered for the incident.
The US government, through its peace envoy, John Danforth, has been attempting to build confidence in the Sudanese peace process with four specific measures, including a proposal to deploy independent monitors to help protect civilians from attack.
The Sudanese government has asserted that the Bieh attack was a mistake which occurred in the context of escalated military action against oil extraction facilities by southern rebels, and that it would establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the incident.
"We deeply regret this appalling incident," the Associated Press agency (AP) on Thursday quoted presidential peace adviser Salah al-Din al-Atabani as saying. "Yet, as the US forces in Afghanistan know well, however much care is taken in war, civilians are inevitably the unintended victims of any conflict," he added.
According to Danforth, however, the Bieh helicopter gunship attack took place despite indications by the Sudanese government last week that it would accept an international mechanism to verify the protection of civilians in the Sudanese civil war.
The attack on Bieh, along with reports of similar attacks at other locations, were indicative of an increased level of abuse against civilians, with large movements of displaced people being observed by relief workers, according to Friday's NGO statement. 
"Attacks against humanitarian facilities are also preventing assistance from reaching civilians and are contributing even more to their suffering," it said.
The NGO statement was signed by Save the Children UK, Oxfam GB, Christian Aid, CARE International, Tearfund, World Vision International, Catholic Relief Services, COSVI, CMA, NCA, VSF-Belgium, Dan-ChurchAid and IRC.
The US-based Human Rights Watch on Friday added to the international denunciation of the Bieh attack, describing it as a "major human rights violation" and calling on the Sudanese government to invite a team of international investigators to look into the incident. 
"This is the latest and most deadly helicopter attack on civilians in Sudan's 18-year civil war. It appears to have deliberately targeted civilians and humanitarian workers," said Sudan researcher Jemera Rone. 
Following investigations, the government should take steps to bring to justice those responsible "all the way up the chain of command," Human Rights Watch stated. The government's current offer, to appoint its own military to investigate, was "simply not adequate," it added. [see http://www.hrw.org/africa/]
The recent escalation of hostilities in western Upper Nile appeared to be linked to the signing in January of a merger agreement between the two main rebel groups operating in southern Sudan:  John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the Sudan People's Defence Forces, led by Riek Machar, according to regional analysts.

Three British Christian development charities on Tuesday called on the United States and United Kingdom governments to take the necessary steps to convince all parties engaged in the Sudanese civil war to negotiate peace rather than continuing to pursue military options.
The call was made by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Christian Aid and Tearfund in advance of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, "a conference of Sudan's religious leaders and their external friends", due to be held in London from 4-6 March.
"Now is a critical time in the history of Sudan, with one of the best opportunities to move the peace process forward," they quoted Catholic Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, as saying.
"The Christian churches have always played an important role in promoting dialogue, and this conference is one more attempt to find solutions to the problems that lie at the heart of Sudan's conflict," Konstant added.
British Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short is scheduled to participate in the forum as a keynote speaker.
"All who care for the people of Sudan should work for a just peace rather than a prolongation of the war," Tuesday's statement by the NGOs quoted her as saying. "I believe the churches in the UK, United States and Sudan could be a major engine of peace."
The forum will also endeavour to make sure that the voice of southern Sudanese civil society is heard more clearly, according to the three charities, who are funding it.
"Any peace agreement that is reached without taking into account the views of the ordinary people will not be sustainable," said Rob Rees, CAFOD programme officer for Sudan.
"The kind of system that can bring about a just and lasting peace has to be found by the Sudanese through discussions among themselves, but the ecumenical community can do much to help this happen," he added.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMTC) on Tuesday expressed its urgent concern that the government of Sudan appears to have resumed the punishment of amputation of limbs, "and that it is beginning systematically to execute sentences of amputation given in 2000 and 2001".
It said in a statement that it had received information from one of its partner organisations, the Sudanese Victims of Torture Group (SVTG), that 46-year-old Anthony James Ladou Wani had had his right hand amputated on 24 January after his conviction on charges of stealing motor-vehicle spares.
Wani was sentenced in May 2000 after a trial in which he had no legal representation, because he was unable to pay for it, and had been detained since in Kober prison, in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, according to the Swiss-based organisation.
It was being alleged that Wani - a Christian member of the Kakwa tribe in southern Sudan - had not received a fair trial, that there had not been enough evidence to convict him, and that judicial procedures had not been followed properly, it added.
The punishment of amputation "is against the Government of Sudan's international obligations, with regards to Article 5 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 7 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights", according to the OMTC.
The use of amputation as a punishment was also prohibited under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which has been ratified by Sudan, it said.
In its statement, the OMTC called on Khartoum to "immediately stop the inhuman practice of amputation" and to abolish the use of amputation - enshrined in the Sudanese Criminal Act 1991 - as a method of punishment. It also urged the Sudanese authorities to commute all sentences of amputation, ensure access to legal representation and guarantee a right of appeal for all individuals.
Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Wednesday that amputations were among the punishments set out under Shari'ah law, and which are practiced through out the Islamic world, not just in Sudan.
"The punishments are part of our religion. Amputation as a punishment occurs throughout the Islamic world, so why single out Sudan?" he asked. 
International human rights conventions to which Sudan is a signatory do not prohibit the Islamic interpretation of human rights, according to Dirdiery. 
"Because we are part of those conventions does not means we are denied our right to practice Shari'ah. There is a cross-cultural interpretation of human rights, and the Euro-northern hegemony of culture is not our interpretation," he said.
He added, however, that such punishments were rare, and said they had only taken place twice since President Umar Hasan al-Bashir came to power in 1989.
The OMTC statement on amputations came just days after another alert, on 19 February, in which it followed other rights groups in expressing concern for the pregnant, 18 year-old Abok Alfa Akok, who had reportedly received 75 lashes after sentencing by the criminal court in Nyala, Southern Darfur State, on 12 February.
The court had originally sentenced Akok to death by stoning for allegedly being pregnant out of wedlock, but an appeals court overturned that and sent the case back to the lower court for fresh sentencing, Reuters news agency reported on 10 February.
The original ruling was made in line with Shari'ah [Islamic] law, even though Akok - a member of Sudan's Dinka tribe, the largest ethnic group in the south - was Christian, according to Reuters.
The US-based Human Rights Watch expressed its deep concern on 1 February, including in a letter to Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir, about "barbaric punishments" in Sudan. It specified  Akok's sentence of death by stoning and the use of amputations as a punishment.
[see http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan.php]
Sudan is committed to respecting the human rights of everyone under its jurisdiction and believes that this goal is compatible with the country's Islamic and African traditions, according to the Advisory Council on Human Rights of the Government of Sudan. 
It says it accepts information from any individual, nongovernmental organisation or governmental organisation considered relevant to improving human rights in Sudan, and invites such people or groups to bring alleged violations of human rights to its attention so that it can try to take action to end or prevent them.
[see http://dcregistry.com/homepages/suahrc.html]

A government helicopter-gunship specifically targeted the homes of civilians and fired on people as they ran for cover during an attack on a relief food distribution in one of Sudan's key oil-producing regions last week, according to humanitarian sources.
A government gunship hovered over a compound housing several aid agencies before firing horizontally, aiming at civilian homes, according to relief workers citing civilians who fled the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile, after the attack.
"Rockets were used to blow up tukul [house] after tukul with people inside, followed by machine guns aimed at those running for cover," sources informed IRIN.
The US government on Thursday 21 February said it would suspend peace discussions with Khartoum until it received a "full and complete explanation" for the attack, which took place on Wednesday 20 February during a government-approved distribution of relief food to some 10,000 people in the area.
Although initial reports said 17 people had died in the attack, more recent information has suggested that at least 24 people were killed, and the figure could be higher still, according to informed sources. Because many people had been killed while still inside their tukuls, it had been difficult to ascertain the exact number of casualties.
Civilians caught inside their homes when the gunship opened fire had been "burned beyond recognition", making it difficult even to tell whether the victims were male or female, according to one account.
The attack at Bieh was the second clearly verified air attack on civilian targets in the oil-rich region this month. On 9 February, the village of Nimne, also in western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), was bombed by government aircraft, killing five civilians, including an employee of the international health agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Government helicopters had recently been a "common sight" in the area, often seen flying low over villages, humanitarian sources reported, citing displaced civilians.
The region of western Upper Nile, site of many of Sudan's oilfields, has seen continued fighting between forces loyal to the Sudanese government and different rebel groups at various times in recent years, causing the repeated displacement of local people.
The attack on Bieh had served to exacerbate the problems faced by thousands of displaced people in the area, forcing many to retreat into swamps or forests for safety, according to IRIN sources.
It was unlikely that they would be readily accessible for relief interventions following the Bieh incident, and many of the displaced would look to head south beyond Leer (Ler) District, they said.
The Sudanese government on Saturday asserted that the attack was a mistake which had occurred in the context of escalated military action against oil extraction facilities by southern rebels, and that it would form a commission of inquiry to investigate the incident.
"In the framework of this escalation, imposed on us, there have occurred some regrettable mistakes, which are not intentional, through which innocent civilians have become victims, and we promise to work hard to terminate and not repeat them," a statement from the Sudanese foreign ministry said.
By contrast, the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has claimed that government forces have mounted a dry-season offensive in order to gain firm control of the region's lucrative oilfields.
A recent escalation in fighting in western Upper Nile appears to be linked to the signing in January of a merger agreement between the two main rebel groups operating in southern Sudan - John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the Sudan People's Defence Force, led by Riek Machar, according to analysts.

Former US President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are scheduled to attend an international conference on the eradication of Guinea worm disease in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in early March, to push anew for a combined effort to make the disease the second to be eradicated worldwide, after smallpox.
Sudan has the single highest health burden from Guinea worm disease in the world and poses "the final great challenge to Guinea worm eradication", according to the Carter Center, jointly founded by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 1981 in an effort to address the root causes of suffering, spread democratic governance, and resolve and prevent conflict.
"The Sudan civil war is now the single largest obstacle to achieving eradication" of Guinea worm disease, the Carter Center reported on Monday. 
The organisation is co-sponsoring the 4-7 March meeting in Khartoum, which will bring together leaders of the Guinea worm eradication effort in Africa, with the government of Sudan, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The Guinea worm is a parasite that gives rise, through contaminated water, to a disease - sometimes known as dracunculiasis or "the fiery serpent" - which causes intense pain, leaving its victims unable to work, attend school, care for children or harvest crops. 
Sudan reported more than 54,000 cases in 2000, representing almost three-quarters of all reported cases in the world, after worldwide incidence had been reduced from 3.2 million cases in 1986 to fewer than 75,000 in 2000, according to the Carter Center. The areas with the highest recorded incidences were Western and Southern Kordofan in west and south-central Sudan, and southern Blue Nile, White Nile and Sinnar in east-central Sudan.
Last year, there were an estimated 49,000-plus reported cases in almost 4,000 Sudanese villages, though the continuing civil war prevented health workers from getting complete reports on the incidence of the disease or educating people on how to prevent it, the Center reported. 
Twelve other African countries reported an estimated total of 14,000 cases in 2001. 
Through the Sudan Guinea Worm Pipe Filter Project, the Carter Center and partner agencies last year began a campaign to distribute nine million water pipe filters in Sudan - one for every man, women and child at risk. Systematic filtering of drinking water derived from shallow unprotected wells, from surface water, well heads or pumps is all that is needed to filter out the minute crustacean cyclops which continue the cycle of disease, according to the WHO. 
"Through an international coalition, 98 percent of all Guinea worm [Disease] cases have been eliminated, but serious challenges remain," according to Jimmy Carter. "We need financial support, political will and diplomatic backing so that affected countries can finish the job as quickly as possible."
Using low-technology methods and knowledge gained for eradication efforts, the poorest of the poor in Sudan and elsewhere now have the tools to help themselves and achieve results, said Dr Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben of the Center's Global 2000 Guinea worm eradication programme. However, peace and stability were also "essential to the eradication effort", he added. 
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il told a press briefing in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, earlier this month that progress had been made between the government and the US peace envoy, John Danforth, on establishing zones and times of tranquillity to allow for mass immunisations and the eradication of other diseases, including Guinea worm disease.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had reported in its situation report on Sudan in January that US proposals related to tranquillity periods to facilitate the eradication of Guinea worm disease had not yet been approved by Khartoum.
Carter is to speak at the opening ceremony of the 4-7 March meeting in Khartoum, while Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir is scheduled to preside over the opening ceremony.
In addition to the Guinea worm disease campaign, the Carter Center is involved in efforts to tackle river blindness (onchocerciasis), the world's leading cause of infectious blindness, spread by the black-fly vector in fertile riverside areas; and trachoma, caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, where repeated infections (easily spread from person to person or by flies that are attracted to faces and runny noses) can cause scarring that leads to blindness.
Of some 120 million people worldwide who are at risk of river blindness, 96 percent are in Africa, according to the WHO. Meanwhile, some 540 million people are at risk of contracting trachoma if the disease is not controlled, and the disease is prevalent in remote areas of poverty, overcrowding and poor hygiene, particularly where clean water and health care are scarce - as they are in many parts of Sudan, and Africa generally. 
On the diplomatic front, the Center has been involved with the governments of Sudan and Uganda on the implementation of the 1999 Nairobi Agreement, which it helped to broker, and which has already helped improve relations between the two countries by addressing issues of mutual concern and arranging for the common exchange of envoys.
Harking back to Guinea worm disease, its eradication would "set a precedent for wiping out other preventable diseases, such as polio, measles, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis," according to Dr Donald Hopkins of the Carter Center.

The Sudanese government announced on Saturday that it would investigate the helicopter attack which killed 17 people during an emergency food distribution in southern Sudan. The announcement followed the US suspension of peace talks with the Khartoum government as a result of the incident.
"The Ministry of Defence has formed a high-level commission of inquiry to investigate what happened in the Bieh region in Unity [Wahdah] State and submit its findings and recommendations quickly to the specialised quarters," the Sudanese foreign ministry said in a statement broadcast on Sudan TV.
A Sudanese government helicopter gunship on Wednesday, 20 February fired six to eight rockets during an attack on a food aid distribution in the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah State), killing 17 people and wounding many others, according to the US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher. 
The US would suspend all negotiations with Khartoum about the Sudanese peace process until the government offered a "full and complete explanation" of what happened, he added.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said the Sudanese (government) authorities had given prior approval to the distribution of some 76 mt of food aid for 10,000 people, and that people had gathered at Bieh to receive that humanitarian relief at the time of the attack.
The US peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, said in an article published in the St Louis Post (in the United States) on Sunday that the attack on Bieh was part of a pattern whereby the Sudanese government said one thing and did another. 
"The history of the Sudan is replete with verbal and written proposals, informal and formal agreements which have been concluded but not really implemented as stated," he said.
"Certainly, the deliberate killing of 17 civilians by a government Sudanese army gunship appears to indicate that the government is not seriously committed to peace," he added.
Danforth has been attempting to improve humanitarian access while ascertaining the seriousness of peaceful intent on the part of the Sudanese government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) through their reaction to four specific proposals, or confidence-building measures, including the establishment of a monitoring system to help protect civilians from military attack.
According to Danforth, the Bieh attack occurred despite indications by the Sudanese government last week that it would accept an international mechanism to verify the protection of civilians in the Sudanese civil war.
Danforth is expected to submit a report within the next few weeks to US President George W Bush on the feasibility of the US taking an active role in efforts to bring an end to Sudan's 19-year civil war. 
The Sudanese foreign ministry statement said the incident at Bieh had arisen as a result of an escalation in hostilities with rebel forces in western Upper Nile. 
"In the framework of this escalation imposed on us, there have occurred some regrettable mistakes, which are not intentional, through which innocent civilians have become victims, and we promise to work hard to terminate and not repeat them," it said.
The attack at Bieh was the second clearly verified air attack on civilian targets in the oil-rich region this month. On 9 February the village of Nimne, also in western Upper Nile, was bombed by government aircraft, killing five civilians, including an employee of the international health agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Also on 9 February, Sudanese government aircraft attacked a food distribution site at Akuem in Bahr al-Ghazal, southern Sudan, killing two children.
On that occasion, Khartoum claimed the attack had resulted from a technical error, and said it was determined to "take the necessary steps to guarantee that such unfortunate and unintentional incidents... will not be repeated".
Danforth said on Sunday that the US State Department had acted "correctly" by suspending all peace talks with Khartoum until someone was held accountable for the attacks. 
"Again, words alone will not suffice. There must be action taken against those responsible, as well as measures taken to ensure that it does not happen again," he stated.

Humanitarian field workers and local authorities have described Bieh state in Jonglei region, southeastern Sudan, as currently being "highly food insecure", according to a mid-February situation update by the Famine Early Warning System Network.
The population's vulnerability follows a poor harvest last year, but also a situation in which the greater part of the population did not cultivate crops, but migrated southeast towards "the promised land" south of Akobo following a self-declared prophet, FEWS Net reported. Moreover, late seasonal flooding damaged crops planted by those who managed to do so.
In January 2001, perhaps 85 to 90 percent of the central Lou Nuer population followed the 'prophet' southeast towards Akobo and Nyandit districts, according to humanitarian sources. This led them into a precarious food security situation because they had limited coping options and their livestock was frequently looted in attacks by the Murle tribe, they said.
With much of the Bieh state population around the Pibor river near Akobo - where most of the lowland Murle herders live - for much of last year, the concentration of people contributed to tension and conflict between the residents and migrants, especially during food distributions, humanitarian sources informed IRIN.
"Field reports indicate that the migrants have [now] returned, following the unconfirmed death of the prophet in January," FEWS Net reported in its Southern Sudan Update on 15 February. The implications of the prophet's reported death for the physical security environment in Bieh had not yet been established, it said.
Observations by intervention teams from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) indicated high rates of malnutrition among the returnees, and these had been corroborated by local authorities which had described the situation as desperate, the USAID- and WFP-supported FEWS Net stated. Field reports also indicated that most of the returnees were women and children, it added.
The nongovernmental health organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Belgium) is currently making a nutritional survey in parts of Bieh state. The results are expected to afford humanitarian agencies with a clearer view of the prevailing food security situation.
More generally, the crop situation was not expected to improve before the next harvest in August/September, according to FEWS Net. January is typically a dry month across southern Sudan, and forage availability, currently declining, is accordingly expected to decrease further. Provision of food aid had begun and might need to continue up to the harvests, it said.
Malnutrition was also "observably high" - and sanitation poor - in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) at Mabiya, Tambura County, Western Equatoria, FEWS Net reported. The camp is host to some thousands of IDPs who fled the fighting which resulted from a government offensive in and around Raga, Western Bahr al-Ghazal, in October 2001.
The physical condition of an uncertain number of IDPs in the Malueth and Malek areas in Rumbek County, Lakes Region, was also noted to be poor, the report stated. Those IDPs had been displaced by fighting between the Dinka populations of Tonj and Rumbek, which had further extended to IDPs of the Nuer tribe in Mapear, it said.
"Urgent and sustained intervention measures are needed" to stem further nutritional deterioration among the IDPs in Tambura and Rumbek, especially given that the hunger gap (the period after planting, between about April and August/September, when food from the previous harvest runs out, while it is still too early for the next) was yet to begin, it added.

The United States government on Thursday suspended peace discussions with the Sudanese government after forces loyal to it attacked a relief centre in southern Sudan, killing 17 people.
"We have demanded from the Sudanese government a full and complete explanation of what happened," US State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement. "Until we receive a full and complete response from the Government of Sudan, the United States is suspending all discussions with Khartoum about the peace process."
Sudanese government officials were unavailable for comment because of the Muslim religious festival Id-al-Adha. 
However, the Sudanese army on Thursday issued a statement denying that it was deliberately targeting civilians and alleged that accusations to that effect were "lies" being put out by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). It insisted that its forces were engaged in protecting the country's oil-producing regions and the people who worked there, AFP news agency reported from Khartoum. 
According to Boucher, a Sudanese government helicopter gunship on Wednesday fired six to eight rockets during an attack on a food aid distribution in the village of Bieh, western Upper Nile (Wahdah State), killing 17 people and injuring many others.
The Sudanese authorities had given prior approval to the distribution by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) of some 76 mt of food aid for 10,000 people, and people had gathered in the village to receive humanitarian relief, WFP said in a statement.
The incident at Bieh was the latest in an "alarming pattern" of recent attacks by the government of Sudan and associated militias against civilians at or near humanitarian facilities, according to a joint statement from UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima, WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini and UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. 
Following a Sudanese government bombing attack on a food distribution site at Akuem in Bahr al-Ghazal, southern Sudan, on Saturday 9 February, which killed two children, the US said it was "outraged" and called for the establishement of a "verification mechanism" to help prevent further attacks. 
Khartoum subsequently expressed its "profound regrets" over the attack at Akuem, saying it was the result of a technical error and not a premeditated act.
In addition, on 9 February the town of Nimne, also in western Upper Nile, was bombed by government aircraft, killing five civilians, including one employee of the international health agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
"These attacks are especially shocking when set against the backdrop of a population in dire need of assistance", the joint UN statement said.
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