US provides 200,000 tons of wheat for Sudan’s Darfur region

LAGOS, Dec 9, 2004 (Xinhua) — The US government is to provide 200, 000 tons of wheat to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region to relieve suffering and avert famine in the area, a statement from the US embassy in Nigeria said Thursday.

Tony Hall, the US Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture, poses in front of a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) truck carrying food aid donated by the US, Monday, Nov.22, 2004, in the desert of Libya near the Chad border.

The food aid from an emergency reserve, the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, is expected to meet the needs of about 3 million starving people in a period of five months, said the statement, cited by the News Agency of Nigeria.

“Through the Emerson Trust, the United States will meet the needs of two to three million Sudanese displaced inside Darfur or have fled to the neighboring Chad,” the statement quoted administrator of US Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios, as saying.

The Emerson Humanitarian Trust is a food reserve administered by the US Secretary of Agriculture to meet emergency humanitarian food needs in developing countries.

The statement said that the wheat, which would be shipped as ” emergency food relief” and would be distributed mainly through the UN World Food Program, would arrive over the next few months.

Darfur has plunged into conflict since February 2003, when two rebel forces took up arms against the Khartoum government, accusing the authorities of not protecting them from the attacks of the Janjaweed militia and demanding autonomy.

The United Nations calls the conflict in the restive region the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, in which thousands were reportedly killed and one million others displaced.