CAIRO, 14 January 2004 — The World Food Program appealed yesterday for $11 million to provide urgent aid for tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees camped in Chad who have fled an escalating conflict in Africa’s largest country.

Two main rebel groups launched a revolt in the western Darfur region bordering Chad in February, accusing the government of sidelining the poor area. Fighting has intensified since peace talks with one group collapsed last month.

About 95,000 refugees have crossed the border into Chad with another one million people displaced within the three Darfur states, the WFP said in a report issued yesterday. It said 30,000 people fled the troubles in December alone.

“The humanitarian situation in the border area has quickly become very serious and as the need for assistance grows, food and relief stocks are dwindling,” said Philippe Guyon le Bouffy, WFP’s representative in Chad.

The report said most of the refugees were women and children, suffering from diarrhea and respiratory infections. Many refugees spoke of marauding militias who burned and looted villages and killed the male inhabitants.

Aid agencies have said it is impossible to distribute humanitarian aid outside of the three main towns in Darfur and the United Nations has warned of a serious humanitarian crisis. Analysts say the conflict in Darfur could undermine an impending peace deal being negotiated in Kenya with a separate rebel group to end 20 years of civil war that killed about two million people in south Sudan. The two sides signed a key wealth-sharing deal last week and hope to finalize an accord early this year.

Rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement yesterday accused the Sudanese government of carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region and denied the movement was supported by Eritrea or Israel. “Khartoum uses foreign and MiG planes to bomb civilian areas and is carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing in the Darfur,” charged SLM chief Mani Arkoi Minawi.

Minawi also refuted allegations that his movement was being aided by Eritrea and Israel. “The government in Khartoum accuses neighboring Eritrea and Israel of backing the SLM, but the SLM wholly rejects these allegations. We don’t have any links with Eritrea or Israel, be it with regard to training, medical treatment or support,” he told AFP in Cairo.

“These allegations are nothing but lies and slander,” he added. He stressed that the SLM welcomed “the American vision of settling the problem in Darfur along the lines of the solution set up to overcome the difficulties in southern Sudan.” The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army is in the process of concluding a peace agreement with Khartoum, based on sharing wealth and power and advocating a referendum on possible autonomy for the south, which would put an end to 20 years of civil war.

Sudan expects a deal in a few weeks but wants it signed in an African country rather than in Washington, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said in remarks published here yesterday. “We prefer that the peace agreement be signed in Africa” with the, Ismail said in an interview with the Egyptian government newspaper Al-Ahram.

“We want to send a message saying the children of Africa are capable of solving their own problems,” Ismail was quoted as saying. “This would also be better for the United States,” because it would allow “the international community to admit that the United States helped and supported Africa to resolve its problems,” he said.