Aid groups say Darfur worse, more help needed

WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) – The United Nations and leading aid groups said on Thursday the world community must act quickly in Sudan’s Darfur region to stop food, water and medicines from running out in the next few months.

“If there is not a major increase of food, clean water and medicine, then October, November and December look very dire indeed,” said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children.

MacCormack and the heads of other U.S.-based relief groups CARE and the International Rescue Committee, called for more African peacekeepers and monitors and for greater funding for people displaced by the attacks in the western Sudan region.

“There is a real narrowing of the food, medicine and water pipeline that has to be expanded in the coming weeks or things will go from bad to worse,” MacCormack said.

The United Nations says murder, pillaging and rape in mainly non-Arab villages by the mostly-Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, has cost tens of thousands of lives.

The United Nations has called Darfur one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 1 million displaced people and 200,000 refugees encamped in neighboring Chad.

In a briefing to the U.N. Security Council in New York, Jan Pronk, the special U.N. envoy for Sudan, said relief groups needed a minimum of another $250 million until the end of the year, not to mention demands arising in 2005.

“There is much talk about Darfur outside Sudan,” Pronk said, adding it was time to “put your money where your mouth is.”

CARE president Peter Bell said there was still a pervasive fear and distrust of Sudanese government forces in the camps, and militia were making incursions into these camps.

He said an agreement between the United Nations and the Sudanese government to establish safe havens had not been accepted by rebel groups.

“We believe that this is a short term, imperfect and could be a dangerous solution as it could lure more and more people out of their villages and into areas where they could be quite exposed,” said Bell.