Thousands in Peril of Starvation in Sudan, U.S. Ambassador Says

Hundreds of thousands of sick and starving people could die in southern Sudan unless they are sent more food and medicine soon, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan said Thursday.

Ambassador Donald Petterson said the suffering in the southern part of Africa’s largest nation is comparable to that of neighboring Somalia, where a U.S.-led military force intervened to restore order and guard aid shipments.

He said Sudan needs an urgent infusion of humanitarian aid first, then “more active” intervention by the international community to end the 10-year-old civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. He did not spell out what he meant by intervention.

Petterson spoke at a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, after a five-day trip to several government- and rebel-controlled towns in southern Sudan.

“I was horrified by the suffering I witnessed and by the human cost of this struggle for dominance over that devastated and too-often forgotten part of the world,” he said.

“We saw walking skeletons, children and other people on the verge of death, vacant stares, people riddled with diseases--all the sights and smells of deprivation and despair.”

The Sudanese People’s Liberation Army has been fighting the Muslim-dominated government in Khartoum since 1983 to win a bigger portion of the country’s wealth for the mostly Christian and animist south.

Since 1991, two rebel factions have split off, and fighting among the rebels may be largely to blame for the recent bloodshed and homelessness, Petterson said.

The government and rebels routinely have hampered relief efforts. But all sides in the conflict recently agreed to allow aid deliveries to about 40 areas that the U.N. Children’s Fund says it wants to serve.

U.N. workers who traveled to the newly accessible areas in recent months estimate that 3.5 million people live there and say 700,000 are at risk of starving and 800,000 need sustained medical care.

Petterson expressed hope that proposed peace talks will begin soon, but he said he is not optimistic because rebel leaders he met seemed unwilling to compromise.