Sudan Revolts

Sudanese rebels abducted three American and one British Christian aid workers from their homes in southern Sudan during an early morning raid, officials said Wednesday. "The armed men identified themselves as members of the SPLA, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army," said Dan Bitrus, executive director of the Nairobi-based Assn. of Christian Resource Organizations Serving Sudan (ACROSS).

The U.S. announced Thursday that it was suspending efforts to help broker an end to Sudan's nearly two-decade civil war after government helicopter gunships attacked civilians waiting for food at a U.N. site, killing at least 17 people.

Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster, have sent an unusual joint letter to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook asking his support for action by the United Nations to end the civil war in Sudan. Their plea was made in response to a letter to Cook from the bishops of the Anglican Church of Sudan, sent from their recent meeting in Nairobi. Conditions in Sudan are such that the bishops have to meet outside their country.

Sudan's government and rebels agreed Saturday to a cease-fire in the vast country's Nuba Mountains, opening the way for aid to reach the troubled region and boosting hopes for wider peace in one of Africa's longest civil wars. Negotiators from the government and the southern-based Sudanese People's Liberation Army, or SPLA, signed the deal during talks mediated by U.S. and Swiss diplomats. They agreed to stop fighting in the mountains within three days.

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. "Everything is so expensive--even for the director of a company like me."

The government has agreed to hold an internationally supervised referendum on self-determination in the country's war-torn south. Still, the two sides in the civil war remain deadlocked over the issue of religion, with the government saying Sudan is an Islamic state and the rebels wanting freedom of religion. A communique issued after the third day of talks in Nairobi, Kenya, said negotiations will continue on how to conduct the referendum. More than 1.

A Sudanese government plane bombed a primary school in rebel-controlled southern Sudan, killing 13 students, Sudanese rebels said. Several teachers and students were injured when a Russian-made Antonov bomber dropped six explosives on and around the school in the town of Kaouda in the Nuba Mountains, 325 miles southwest of Khartoum, the capital, said Samson Kwaje, spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Army. All of those killed were under 14, Kwaje said.

Sudanese rebels said Friday that they captured 1,000 government soldiers after overrunning the major town of Yei and Morobo garrison in the south. Meanwhile, a Sudanese minister said rebel weapons seemed unlikely to have come from Uganda. The government has accused Uganda of sending troops to fight alongside the rebels.

Former President Jimmy Carter has returned to Sudan to try to secure an extension of a cease-fire, set to end July 28, that he negotiated in March. The official Sudan News Agency said Carter was met in Khartoum by Sudanese Health Minister Gatlouk Deng. Carter negotiated a cease-fire four months ago between the government of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.

In their biggest offensive of this nation's decade-old civil war, government forces have routed southern rebels from several key towns and are driving toward the Ugandan border, Western and Arab diplomats said Friday. The rebels--made up of Christians and pagans from the black south--broke and ran last week from Kajo Kaji, their main supply center. They now control only one town, Nimule, on the White Nile.

The announcement this week that Sudan had agreed to negotiate an internationally monitored cease-fire was supposed to be a significant step in ending a brutal civil war. It marked the first positive response from the Sudanese government to conditions set by former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth, President Bush's special envoy who is trying to bring an end to the country's 18 years of ethnic and religious warfare.

President Bush launched a U.S. initiative Thursday to end Sudan's long and brutal civil war, saying he wants to "spare that land from more years of sorrow" but acknowledging the daunting challenge ahead. In an announcement at the White House Rose Garden, the president named former Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) as special envoy to lead the diplomatic effort.

Six months after being pulled out of rebel forces fighting in Sudan's 18-year civil war, a batch of former child soldiers has gone home. U.N. officials said Wednesday that 3,480 former child fighters--some as young as 8--have been sent back to their homes in southern Sudan after being retrained as teachers, mechanics and farmers. Over the next 18 months, the U.N.

Sudan's president and the country's main rebel leader will attend a peace summit in Nairobi, Kenya, aimed at ending their 18-year civil war, a rebel official said. The Saturday summit, organized by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, will mark the first time the two have attended the same peace talks since 1997, said Justin Arop, a Sudan People's Liberation Army official. SPLA leader John Garang will attend with the president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, Arop said.

The Sudanese government and southern rebels exchanged accusations over who was responsible for shooting at a Red Cross plane and killing its co-pilot over southern Sudan on Wednesday. The plane was hit twice about halfway through its flight from Lokichokio, Kenya, to Juba, Sudan. One exploding shell damaged the cockpit and killed the co-pilot and another damaged the right wing, said Michael Kleiner, a Red Cross spokesman in Nairobi.

A stepped-up government bombing campaign that has exacted a high civilian toll has sparked outrage among the international community and strengthened U.S. resolve to beef up its humanitarian and moral support to the people of southern Sudan, who are bearing the brunt of a 17-year-old civil war. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan E.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cooed Wednesday as she cradled in her arms a month-old girl who two weeks earlier had been rescued by her 5-year-old brother from a village massacre that left their mother and 13 other women dead. "You're going to be all right," she said in grandmotherly fashion, comforting a baby who had survived an unspeakable horror that is distressingly common in northern Uganda.

Government bombing of rebel-controlled areas in southern Sudan has created an exodus of 100,000 people, many fleeing to nearby Uganda and Zaire, a church group reported. The New Sudan Council of Churches said the government began the bombing on July 26 and escalated it in early August. It forced more than 30,000 people to flee to Uganda. Another 70,000 sought refuge in Zaire or elsewhere in southern Sudan.

A phalanx of international relief organizations suspended operations in southern Sudan on Wednesday in frustration over the groups' failure to reach an agreement with guerrillas in the war-torn region over security concerns and the distribution of aid. The abrupt departure of the dozen or so aid organizations could seriously jeopardize ongoing humanitarian relief programs in southern Sudan and put at risk the lives of tens of thousands of people.

The Sudan operation of Canada's largest oil company, Talisman Energy Inc., has been allowing human rights abuses and playing a role in the African country's civil war, Canadian government investigators said Monday. But the Foreign Ministry stopped short of forcing Talisman to halt work there, arguing that it is better to increase foreign influence in the war-torn country.