Japan donates $100m to Sudan

2005-04-11 08:20

Tokyo - Japan will offer $100m in aid to Sudan to help rebuild the vast African nation following a peace deal that ended its 21-year north-south civil war, a government official said Monday.

"We plan to actively implement $100m of aid for the time being," the foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Details of the pledge will be announced by Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa in Norway where a donors conference begins on Monday, she said.

The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said on Monday that Japan agreed on the aid because it judged it needed to show it cared deeply about Africa as it is bidding for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Japan has in recent years reduced its aid budget, long a key tool of its foreign policy, as it takes a global role in other ways such as a military mission in Iraq.

But earlier reports said Japan has decided Sudan is too risky to contribute UN peacekeeping troops, ruling against a mission that would have marked a new breakthrough for the officially pacifist country.

Sudan's government and rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the country's south signed a peace accord in January ending two decades of strife that claimed about 1,5 million lives.

A separate bloody conflict is ongoing in Darfur in the west.

Japan has about 600 troops in Iraq on a humanitarian mission in its first military deployment since 1945 to a country where there is active fighting.

Japan sent about 950 troops to Indonesia this year for tsunami relief in its biggest post-World War 2 deployment and disbursed $500m in aid after the disaster.

- AFP