Sudan's oil Fuelling a fire, The Economist, Khartoum, September 2nd-8th 2000 - Abstracts.

Talisman is offering development and looking for partners for development in the form of ware, but all the NGOs in the area have so far turned up their noses. The other foreign partners in the Greater Nile consortium, the state oil companies of China and Malaysia, are reported to be wryly amused by their partner's earnest efforts to observe human rights. The UN will not even use the oil company's tarmac airstrip at Bentiu for fear of being compromised.

Nor is the Sudanese government particularly interested in Talisman's problems. It is resentful of the company's political activists. The oil minister, insists it is not Talisman's business "to talk about human rights", adding ominously that Sudan does not need Talisman to extract oil.

Talisman claims to have convinced the government to set up a fund to help war-ravaged areas, an idea the government claims as its own. But, even if the fund is set up and oil money is used for it, there is still plenty to spend on weapons.

That is the crunch for Talisman. Sudan's government finances are obscure but, according to one minister, Sudan's top priority is to refurbish the army. Some of the estimated $300m the government will get from oil this year is already being spent on weapons. For all its concern for ethical business, human rights and development, the ugly truth is that Talisman is helping the government extract oil, and oil is paying for the war.