Sudan peace talks continue under strict news blackout
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from August 1998.
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On Tuesday, participants agreed to a three-point agenda that included discussion of the limits of southern Sudan, the role of the Muslim religion in the region's future and administrative details connected with an internationally supervised referendum on selfdetermination in the southern portion of Africa's largest nation. Government and rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Army, whose 15-year civil war has ravaged Sudan and created a famine that is claiming hundreds of lives a day, are at odds over the delimitation of the area in which people will vote whether they favor selfdetermination and greater autonomy from the Khartoum government.
In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, a U.S. official who has just returned from the famine-stricken area, said Wednesday that although more food is being delivered to the area, the situation is not improving. "Explanations? An immediate one offered is diversion. On that there is little doubt that not all of the food gets to where we feel it should," said Roy Williams, director of foreign disaster assistance for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
There have been claims that the SPLA is taking part of the relief food to feed its troops.
Williams said part of the problem is that the most vulnerable are not being reached, partly because of limited air capacity.
He said U.S. AID hopes to resolve that problem by renting two C-130 cargo planes for three months to carry relief food into southern Sudan.
