Aid group urges Bush to do more in Sudan

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – President George W. Bush should do more to ease the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, the biggest alliance of U.S.-based international aid groups said on Tuesday..

InterAction, which represents more than 160 U.S. non-governmental organizations, said it was imperative the U.S. government do even more to support an African Union (AU) peacekeeping effort in Darfur in western Sudan.

“Steps beyond those presently contemplated will have to be undertaken to relieve the dying and suffering,” InterAction president Mary McClymont wrote in a letter to the president.

“Without adequate security and funding, a viable relief effort cannot be sustained,” she added.

Last Friday, the U.S. Air Force sent three cargo planes to carry Rwandan forces and equipment to Darfur to assist the AU peacekeeping effort in western Sudan.

The 53-nation AU agreed to send more than 3,000 extra troops to help restore security in Darfur and monitor a faltering truce between rebels and government forces there.

There are currently only 300 AU soldiers in Darfur to protect 150 AU observers monitoring the truce in an area the size of France.

The Senate has included in its Foreign Operations bill $75 million in emergency funding to help pay some of the expenses of AU forces and has also authorized transfer of $150 million from Iraq funds to meet humanitarian needs in Darfur and Chad.

McClymont urged Bush to support these moves by Congress but stressed more aid for Sudan should not come at the expense of other needs in Africa and the Caribbean.

More than 1.5 million people have been made homeless in Sudan since two rebel groups, accusing the government of neglect, launched a revolt in early 2003 following years of skirmishes between African farmers and Arab nomads over land.

McClymont said about 600,000 people in Darfur did not have enough food and could not be reached by emergency food distribution programs. More than half of 1.6 million displaced people did not have access to sanitation facilities.

In neighboring Chad, water wells essential to the survival of many of the 200,000 refugees there were drying up and the local population was become increasingly unhappy as it competed with refugees for water and other resources, she said.

Exacerbating these problems, the opportunity was lost to harvest this year’s crops and InterAction estimated people in Darfur would have to rely on international aid for at another 12-18 months.