The Government has announced an action plan to help address the humanitarian crisis in southern Sudan, where famine is threatening hundreds of thousands.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, and the Minister of State for overseas development, Ms Liz O'Donnell, are due to meet Irish aid agencies active in Sudan this morning to determine what action can be taken.
As a new round of peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebels in the south opened in Nairobi yesterday, the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, appealed to "governments and populations of the world" to respond urgently to a UN appeal for funds for the crisis.
Speaking in Nairobi, Mr Annan said the UN had appealed for $109 million for relief efforts in Sudan, but had received pledges for only 20 per cent of that amount.
The peace talks got off to a gloomy start yesterday, with the Kenyan Foreign Minister, Mr Bonaya Godana, saying the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had "not reconsidered their position" since last November's round of talks broke up inconclusively.
However, the decision by the Khartoum government to give permission for extra aircraft to fly supplies into the stricken area has raised hopes that the threatened famine can be averted.
The Irish ambassador in Cairo, Mr Hugh Swift, has been instructed by Mr Andrews to travel to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, immediately. Mr Swift will call on the Sudanese government to remove all conditions attached to the delivery of aid to the south of the country.
Mr Swift will also talk to British representatives of the EU Presidency in Sudan. The EU called on the Sudanese government to facilitate the delivery of food and other essential supplies.
AFP has reported that Sudan's Catholic archbishop was arrested and then freed on bail over the failure of a national relief agency which he heads to pay a contracting company. Archbishop Gabriel Zubair Wako, who is in charge of Sudanaid, was detained on Friday for 24 hours because the charity has yet to pay the Sudanese trading firm, Abu Huzaifah, more than $660,000 for food it supplied in 1988 to 1990.
In another development, further evidence that slavery continues to flourish emerged yesterday, with the Vatican agency, Fides, claiming that more than 1,000 children have been taken as slaves by mujahedeen militia, who consider them spoils of war.
"The fate of these children, almost all of whom are aged less than 12, is to be sold in Arab markets and the Middle East, to work as guards or to be sexually exploited," the agency said.
Fides was informed about the child slaves by people who came across the group of mujahedeen from Abyei, on the border with Bar el-Ghazal. According to the agency, the children, together with some 10,000 cows, were the reward for the pro-government mujahedeen, following clashes with SPLA fighters. Representatives of the Catholic Church managed to buy a total of 37 children and to free them, Fides reported.
A Sudanese national assembly member from the east who has defected to an alliance of southern rebels and the northern opposition called yesterday for more armed action to oust the regime.
The deputy, Mr Qamer Hassan al-Tahir, made a statement on the radio of the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), based in neighbouring Eritrea, and said he had joined the military wing of the opposition Umma party.
More than one million people have died in Sudan's civil war. A drought last year has added to the country's woes.
