Khartoum clears OLS flight plans

The Sudanese government on Monday cleared the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) flight plan for August, including external flights from Lokichoggio, northern Kenya. UN Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator Ross Mountain told IRIN on Tuesday that he welcomed the move. The OLS is a consortium of many of the humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan, including UN agencies. Mountain met senior government officials on Monday to discuss the breakdown of the humanitarian ceasefire in Bahr el Ghazal province, southern Sudan, and recent criticism of the OLS humanitarian operation in the Sudanese media. He told IRIN there was “full recognition of the impartiality and transparency of the operations of the UN agencies and NGOs under the consortium” within the government, but said he was very concerned about quotes attributed to him in the Sudanese media, in which he was alleged to have said that NGOs and rebels had violated relief agreements. “I do not recognise these quotes even from private meetings. OLS is operating within the approach of the tripartite agreement [between the OLS, Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)] with transparency and impartiality,” he said. Mountain said he had held numerous meetings at ministerial level over the breakdown of the ceasefire in Bahr el Ghazal, and was “very pleased to be assured of the importance placed on the continuation of OLS.” He told IRIN that, with neither side officially extending the lapsed ceasefire, fighting on both sides had “serious consequences ... for the Sudan population and, most recently, for the safety of humanitarian workers.”