Donors Pledge $4.5 Billion to Sudan 

Agencies, Arab News

OSLO, 13 April 2005 — Donors yesterday pledged far more than what is needed to help rebuild Sudan’s pacified southern and northern areas at a conference here as the United States tied its aid to improvements in the strife-torn Darfur region. “This conference has pledged $4.5 billion for 2005, 2006 and 2007,” Norway’s Minister for Development Aid Hilde Frafjord Johnson told the donors gathered in Oslo. She said “at least two billion dollars” were promised in bilateral funding to assist Sudan’s reconstruction.

Based on a joint United Nations, World Bank and Sudanese needs’ assessment, donors were asked to contribute $2.6 billion by the end of 2007 for reconstruction and development after a January peace accord ended 21 years of civil conflict in Sudan’s south and parts in the north.

At least 1.5 million people were killed and another four million displaced, some of whom have already returned and are the priority for aid.

Khartoum will finance another $5.2 billion from its own oil resources, according to a report compiled last month by government representatives and ex-rebels. The United Nations was also seeking one billion dollars as part of a 1.5 billion fund for food and other humanitarian aid throughout Sudan in 2005. And Johnson said that very amount had been pledged by donors yesterday.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said his country would “seek to provide between one and two billion dollars” during the next two years. He said $853 million would be allocated in 2005 to support reconstruction efforts in Sudan’s south and humanitarian needs country-wide.

“President (George W.) Bush has requested another 900 million (from congress) for this year and next,” added Zoellick who will visit Sudan later this week.

But Zoellick conditioned financial support to Sudan’s north-south peace deal, or Comprehensive Peace Agreement, on resolving the two-year-old conflict in the country’s Darfur western region that has left at least 300,000 people dead.