Libya gives $4.5m to WFP to help feed Darfur
April 19, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Libya has given $4.5 million to a U.N. agency to help feed the people of Darfur, western Sudan.
Famine and disease have caused deaths of many of the tens of thousands who have perished since the Darfur conflict erupted in 2003. Several million others have either fled into neighboring Chad or been displaced inside Sudan.
Libya’s donation, made Tuesday, is its first to the World Food Programme. It covers increases since last year in the cost of jet fuel needed to airlift food during May to November rainy season.
Since August 2004, Libya has facilitated WFP efforts to aid to the Sudanese by allowing it to transport supplies from its Mediterranean port Benghazi overland through the Sahara Desert.
The assistance “comes at a time when there is donor fatigue in many parts of the world and our operations face severe funding shortages,” Bradley Guerrant, WFP deputy regional director for Sudan said in an e-mail sent to The AP.
The WFP requires $746 million for its emergency operation in Sudan in 2006.
Oil-rich Libya has tried to raise its political standing among African countries in recent years and recently hosted peace talks on Darfur. U.S. sanctions against Tripoli were mostly lifted in 2004 after it settled with the families of the 1988 bombing of a PanAm airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
(ST/AP)