UN Chief says South Sudan funds not diverted to Darfur

September 7, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
Said today that the crisis in Darfur did not cause any reallocation of funds from Southern Sudan.

“No money pledged for the development of South Sudan is going to Darfur” Ban Ki-Moon told UN radio Miraya FM in Juba in interview.

During Oslo international donors conference, held in April 2005, donor countries pledged 4.5 billion US dollars to bolster peace and reconstruction in the war-plagued southern Sudan

However officials in the South have complained that they have received a small portion of these pledges.

The UN top official stressed that the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) is “a billion dollar peacekeeping operation, designed solely to support the parties in implementing the CPA.”

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in January 2005 between the National Congress Party which then ruled in the National Government and the then rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement, bringing an end to 21 years of civil war in the country.

The Minister of Information in the semi-autonomous Government of South Sudan, Dr Samson Kwaje, claimed last month that money pledged for Southern Sudan by the international community was going to Darfur.

Ban Ki-Moon said that he was “overwhelmed by the warm welcome of the people of south Sudan”. He said this ‘‘makes my resolve further strengthened to work for the peace and security and development of southern Sudan”.

Ban Ki-Moon was speaking during a visit to the southern capital Juba during this week’s visit to Sudan which also took him to Darfur and Khartoum.

(Miraya FM)