OSLO, 12 April 2005 — Sudan sought $2.6 billion from donors yesterday to rebuild its south after Africa’s longest civil war, a process overshadowed by violence and charges of war crimes in western Darfur.
Former rebels and Sudan’s government vowed to stick to their January deal to end 21 years of fighting and urged donors at a 60-nation conference in Oslo to help the vast, poor region.
Still, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned delegates at the two-day meeting that peace accords around the world often collapse into fighting.
“Over the past three decades, no fewer than half of all post-conflict situations have reverted back to war within five years of the signing of a peace agreement,” he said.
“I look to you all to help ensure that the peace nascent in parts of Sudan can take hold in the country as a whole.”
A report by the United Nations and World Bank, backed by the Khartoum government and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), says Sudan needs $2.6 billion in aid up to the end of 2007 to build everything from hospitals to schools.
“In south Sudan we are starting from scratch,” SPLM leader John Garang said. More than 2 million people were killed and 4 million displaced by the war that pitted the mainly animist and Christian south against the Arab north in a conflict complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.
Annan said Khartoum and the SPLM had to cooperate “under the shadow of Darfur”. The situation in the western region was “extremely grave, with continuing abuse of the civilian population and attacks against humanitarian workers”.
Sudan’s First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha reaffirmed what he called Khartoum’s “total commitment to its quest for peace in Darfur”.
Annan said allegations of human rights crimes in Darfur, referred by the United Nations to the International Criminal Court (ICC), were “not aimed at the people, nor their government ... nor Islam, as some have implied”.
