Powell pledges support to Sudan

NAIROBI, Kenya -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the United States would send 40,000 tonnes of food to Sudan to try to avert famine in the country.

"I was moved by the desperate situation that exists in the Sudan. People are on the verge of starvation," Powell, on a four-nation tour of Africa, told reporters after meeting Kenya-based representatives of relief agencies working in Sudan.

"I call on the government of Sudan to do everything possible to provide access to these people desperately in need and to remove all barriers to providing them with humanitarian aid."

Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development who is travelling with Powell, said he had alarming reports about food shortages in Sudan, beset by a long-running civil war.

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"Things are deteriorating fairly rapidly in the north. On both sides of the conflict in the drought-affected areas, we do not expect people will make it until the fall. We have announced today an additional 40,000 tonnes of food that will be distributed regardless of need on both sides of the conflict."

The U.N. World Food Programme said in March conservative estimates put the number of people at risk from drought in the northern provinces of Darfur and Kordofan at 420,000.

Parts of those regions were having the driest season in living memory.

Natsios cited a nutritional survey from Darfur that he said reported a 52 percent malnutrition rate among the population.

Powell, who later arrived in Uganda on the last stop of a tour that has also taken him to South Africa and Mali, described as a good step a decision announced by the Sudanese government on Thursday to unilaterally cease air strikes in the south.

"But it can't just be for a short period of time," he added. "They ought to stop bombing humanitarian sites altogether. So we will measure their behaviour, we will measure their response to our actions and see whether or not we have a basis for moving forward."

In April, Khartoum rejected a ceasefire call by the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which said the government should halt oil exports and prospecting until a peace deal was reached.

Powell said the United States would work hard to bring about a ceasefire and said a review of U.S. policy on Sudan had "pretty much been completed."

He repeated he was considering a candidate for the post of special Sudan envoy who would "engage with the parties to try to reenergise some of the peace processes that have been in place."

Since Sudan's latest civil war began in 1983, an estimated 2 million people have died as result of the conflict, mainly because of war-induced famine.