Donors pledge $4.5 Bln for Sudan’s Reconstruction

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer

OSLO, Apr 12, 2005 (AP) — Donor countries pledged to give $4.5 billion over the next two years to cover Sudan ‘s humanitarian and reconstruction needs, organizers of a 60-nation conference said Tuesday.

A woman in the southern Sudanese town of Rumbek cleans grain. (AFP).

“I am very pleased with the amount that has been pledged,” Norwegian Development Aid Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson said in closing the two-day conference. “I think the main point is that we have a strong commitment to Sudan .”

The U.S. was a major donor, pledging $1.7 billion Tuesday.

Before the Oslo meeting, organizers had hoped for promises totaling $3.6 billion from the conference, most over the two-year period with the rest, about $1 billion, for immediate assistance.

A peace accord signed in January ended a 21-year civil war in southern Sudan , but violence continues unabated in a separate conflict in the troubled western region of Darfur.

Johnson cautioned that collecting the exact amounts promised from donors could be difficult, but said she considered the pledges a guarantee that the most basic needs would be met.

Former southern rebel leader John Garang, now a member of Sudan ‘s new government, said everything, from roads to power, was needed in the south.

“Give me $10 billion, and I assure you, I will spend it,” Garang said at a closing news conference.

In opening the meeting on Monday, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said $2.6 billion was needed by 2007 to help Sudan , much of it as immediate cash to prevent 2 million people in the south from running out of food within a few weeks.

At Tuesday’s session, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick announced that the U.S. had pledged $853 million for this year, and that the U.S. administration had asked lawmakers for almost $900 million more.

“This is a time of choosing for Sudan ,” said Zoellick. Either build peace, democracy and economic recovery or “Sudan could slip back into the depths” of conflict, he said.