USAID chief criticises Khartoum over poor humanitarian access

The chief administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios, on 12 October pledged that the US would respect the "neutrality of humanitarian assistance" in Sudan, but criticised the Khartoum administration for using relief aid as a tool in the country's 18-year civil war. "By deliberately denying food to large regions of the country and putting obstacles in the way of Operation Lifeline Sudan... the government has provoked at least two separate famines over the past dozen years," he was quoted as saying in a statement from the US Department of State. Speaking at an exhibition on Sudan at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, Natsios said the US had supplied more than US $168 million worth of humanitarian assistance to the people of both north and south Sudan in 2001. "Sudan is, and will remain, a subject of great importance to the Bush administration," he said. Natsios, also the US Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, paid special attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Nubah Mountains, saying that the Nubah people had been denied access to relief by the government of Sudan. "We are doing everything in our power to see that food assistance gets to the Nubah people, and that their plight will not be forgotten," he said. The Sudanese government has been criticised by aid agencies for repeatedly denying access to relief flights in the Nubah Mountains. According to Natsios, the discovery of oil in Sudan had changed the character of the war. He said that although oil revenue could be a major source of funding for development in Sudan, "it has only helped fuel tension, bitterness and war". Forced displacement from around the oil pipeline linking the oilfields in the south to Port Sudan had increased internal displacement and destroyed people's lives.