Sudan promises aid visas
2004-04-29 14:27
Khartoum - Entry visas to Sudan will be granted to US aid officials as soon as a visiting high-level United Nations team is through with its current mission of assessing humanitarian needs in west Sudan's troubled Darfur region, Sudan's acting foreign minister said Thursday.
"I explained to the US charge d'affaires, Gerard Gallucci, on Wednesday that the government of the Sudan has no reservations, whatsoever, towards the USAid and its activities and programmes in Sudan," Najeib al-Khair Abdel Wahab told reporters.
He said he had told Gallucci that entry visas would be granted to applicants from the US Agency for International Development "as soon as the UN mission completes its task of assessing and identifying the humanitarian needs of the affected people in Darfur."
Abdel Wahab added that programmes would be designed to fulfil those needs and USAid "will be one of the major agencies that will implement those programmes".
The UN mission, led by World Food Programme Executive Director James Morris, left Khartoum on Wednesday on a tour of Darfur.
The US on Wednesday denounced as "unacceptable" Sudan's continued refusal to grant visas to a US disaster response team to visit Darfur, accusing Khartoum of ignoring the urgent needs of the Sudanese people.
The state department said Sudan had done little or nothing in response to repeated international appeals to permit relief workers to travel to the region, where a year-old war is estimated to have killed 10 000 people and uprooted a million more.
"They not only continue to hold up visas for our team, but they also continue to restrict the ability of the humanitarian community as a whole to respond to the crisis in Darfur," deputy spokesperson Adam Ereli said.
He took extreme issue with a senior Sudanese official who reportedly told journalists in Khartoum on Tuesday that the 28-strong US disaster response team was not needed in Darfur and would actually complicate the situation there.
"This we view as unacceptable," Ereli said. "We strongly urge the government of Sudan to allow unimpeded access to Darfur immediately.
"In our view, their continued delay of access to humanitarian relief organisations and the international community is preventing assistance from reaching their own citizens, many of whom are in desperate need," he said.
"It also draws into question (Khartoum's) commitment to the well-being of the people of Sudan and their intent to resolve the situation in Darfur."
On Tuesday USAid chief Andrew Natsios accused the Sudanese government of holding up a "massive relief effort" by intentionally blocking access to Darfur and suggested Khartoum might be doing so in a bid to cover up widespread human rights abuses, including ethnic cleansing and systematic rape.
Natsios said Khartoum was withholding visas from the US team for reasons "totally unrelated" to Darfur that have to do with accreditation of Sudanese diplomats in Washington.