Sudan: \'Japan considers helping war-torn Darfur\'-official

(SomaliNet) As an incentive for the Sudanese government in Khartoum to take action to end the Darfur conflict and support a fragile north-south peace deal, Japan is considering offering debt relief to Sudan, an official said on Thursday.

Japan’s offer comes as Nafie Ali Nafie, a top aide to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, holds talks in Japan, which has said it will voice concern about the bloodshed in Darfur.

\"We are studying the possibility of a debt waiver of our government loans to Sudan to support the peace process after the north-south civil war,\" a foreign ministry official said.

\"Apart from the Darfur conflict, Japan has been supporting the peace process\" that ended the 21-year north-south civil war in 2005, he said.

He declined further comment but Jiji Press, citing unnamed government sources, said Japan would make debt relief contingent on concrete steps towards a peaceful end to the Darfur conflict.

Meanwhile, Japan along with Western countries suspended loans to Sudan in 1983 on the outbreak of civil war between Khartoum\'s Arab-dominated government and the largely non-Arab, non-Muslim south.

An estimated two million people died in Africa\'s longest-running civil war which ended with a still-fragile January 2005 power-sharing deal.

But another conflict is raging in the western Darfur region in what the United States has branded genocide.

International organisations estimate that 200 000 people have died in Darfur and more than a third of the six-million population displaced since 2003. Khartoum says the figures are greatly exaggerated.

Sudan was designated among 42 \"heavily indebted poor countries\" in a 1996 initiative by the World Bank but has yet to receive debt relief from the Paris Club of creditor countries.

According to Jiji Press, Japan is considering debt waivers of 3,2-billion yen (about R 243-million) of the 45 billion yen loans Sudan owes to Japan. - Sapa-AFP