WFP close to Darfur food aid deal with Libya

Friday July 9th, 2004.

GENEVA, July 9 (Reuters) - The U.N. food agency said on Friday it was close to signing a deal with Libya to transport urgent food aid to 150,000 refugees who have fled to Chad to escape fighting in neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was also considering using air drops if the rainy season, which has already begun, made land routes impassable for aid convoys.

The WFP said it delivered food last month to 650,000 of the estimated 1.2 million displaced people in Darfur, where the United Nations says the world's worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding. "In July we will try to reach one million and 1.2 million by the end of August," WFP spokesman Simon Plus told a briefing.

Janjaweed Arab militias have driven non-Arab villagers off their land in Darfur in what U.S. officials have described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Some 10,000 to 30,000 people are estimated to have died and more than a million people have been forced out of their villages and are now housed in 137 barren camps in an area the size of France. Some 150,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad.

Sudan, under international pressure, has ordered an end to restrictions on the movement of relief organisations and imports of relief supplies. "We are on the verge of signing an agreement with Libya to transport food to northern Chad," Plus said, adding that a first convoy was expected to leave Benghazi in Libya in early August.

WFP is studying ways of airdropping supplies, including vital nutritional supplements for babies and nursing mothers, in central Darfur as rains will soon make roads impassable.

"These operations, which are obviously very expensive, will only be launched as a last resort," Plus said.

Heavy rains are due in September but the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, said on Wednesday the rainy season had started and that a few days ago three aid vehicles were swept away on the Chadian side of the border.