Sudan Foreign Aid

Idris Nazil, a newspaper editor and head of a publishing firm here, is well-to-do by Sudanese standards. But when he and family members recently came down with fevers, even he couldn't afford the medicine his doctor prescribed. "I said to my wife that I should go to my company and get a loan for this," Nazil recalled scornfully.

Relief agencies trying to avert a catastrophic famine in the southern part of the African nation say efforts to get food through have been hampered by an upsurge in fighting and a sharp deterioration in supply roads in neighboring Kenya.

The military government of Sudan has imprisoned and tortured hundreds of opposition figures, hanged prisoners after brief show trials, and used live ammunition on demonstrators in pursuing an "exceptionally cruel and intolerant" policy of repression, an international human-rights group has charged.