Sudan accuses West of ignoring new food crisis

UNITED NATIONS—

Sudan’s foreign minister said yesterday that the West is ignoring a new hunger crisis in eastern Sudan, complaining that he expected no action until it becomes a full- blown conflict with people dying and refugees fleeing. Mustafa Osman Ismail also charged that European sanctions were one cause of a humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where at least 180,000 people have died from ethnic fighting over arable land and water and from hunger and disease brought by the chaos which erupted in early 2003. An estimated 2.74 million mission of the United Nations” and said the entire world had a stake in freedom in Iraq. He also pledged to move on relief to countries suffering from HIV- AIDS outbreaks and malaria, pledging $ 1.2 billion ( U. S.) to cut malaria rates in half in countries plagued by the disease. Bush also announced a new international partnership to combat survivors are affected by continuing troubles in Darfur, more than 60 per cent of them women and children, the U. N. Children’s Fund says. A similar disaster now looms in the east of Africa’s largest nation, but no one is responding, Ismail said. The international community responds generously to disasters, but is unwilling to act to prevent a crisis, Ismail said.

“ We told them, if you had spent half the money which you are spending now in Darfur before, this tragic situation would never have taken place in Darfur,” he said. avian flu and other pandemics and repeated U. S. support of the world’s fight against poverty in the so- called Millennium agreement. Critics accuse Bush of paying lip service to the poverty question because the Bush administration fought to prevent the U. N. from committing its members to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.