GENEVA, 23 February 2005 — The UN’s food agency warned yesterday that there were signs that Sudan was facing a food crisis, following a sharp rise in crop prices in the country in recent weeks. The World Food Program said the price rises added to shortages caused by failed harvests, poor aid deliveries or violence, especially in the south and east of the country, and the strife-torn western region of Darfur.
“WFP is very concerned about signs of a food crisis in Sudan,” said spokesman Simon Pluess. “The increase in crop prices in the last weeks has been sudden and significant,” he told journalists.
The WFP urged the international community to step up funding for about $300 million worth of food the agency needs to deliver this year. It has only received about eight percent of that amount so far. “There is little time for us, because it takes four months for a pledge to materialize into food,” Pluess said.
Stocks were set to run out in April unless more deliveries were forthcoming, he added. The most affected areas are Bahr Al-Ghazal in the south, which is just emerging from civil war, the central area of Kordofan and Darfur, according to the WFP.
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency said an emergency team would shortly arrive in the south to prepare for the return of about 550,000 refugees from neighboring countries following the peace agreement between the government and rebels.
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it hoped organized repatriation could begin later this year, along with the return of about four million internally displaced people in the south. “It’s a staggering number we will have to deal with,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.
Meanwhile, rebels in Sudan’s western Darfur region on Monday reportedly made their participation at peace talks with Khartoum later this month conditional on EU and US officials overseeing cease-fire obligations.
The Sudanese government has announced that it will resume peace negotiations sponsored by the African Union in Nigeria at the end of February.
But the African Union has not yet notified the Sudan Liberation Movement about the talks in Abuja, an SLM spokesman told the independent Al-Sahafa daily.
SLM attendance at the talks would be conditional on the “reactivation” of a cease-fire committee, provided that EU and US officials were included in the line-up, he added.
“The movement has not received a notification for the resumption of the negotiations and, moreover, regards reactivation of the African Union cease-fire commission as a prerequisite for holding the talks,” Mahjoub Hussein was quoted as saying by the daily.
The last round of peace talks between Khartoum and ethnic minority rebels broke off in December amid rebel charges that the government was planning a massive offensive in Darfur and constant cease-fire violations.
