Libya doing it's bit for Darfur

In its NEWS RELEASE of 25th June 2005 ( hat tip Dr.Ibrahim) "The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) [..] welcomed Libya’s agreement to help cover the costs of its airlift of food aid to western Sudan’s Darfur region, where up to 3.25 million people will require its assistance. [...] The Government of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has agreed to waive tariff increases on jet fuel for this humanitarian cargo. Without this help, the UN agency would have been forced to suspend the airlift this month because jet fuel was set to rise from 13 to 33 US cents per liter, costing WFP an additional US$1.5 million a month to maintain the airlift operation. [...] Since August [of last year], Libya has a provided a crucial transportation corridor which allows for substantial deliveries of WFP food aid to be moved by truck and air from the Libyan port of Benghazi into eastern Chad and the three Darfur states in western Sudan. The airlift began on 7 May with an Ilyushin-76 aircraft carrying the first 38 metric tons of food from Al Kufra to Darfur. There are currently two daily flights to the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher and the South Darfur capital of Nyala. To date, the airlift has delivered a total of 5,623 tons of food – enough to feed almost 150,000 people for two months".

Kudos to Libya for that and hope that more efforts are done to also stop the genocide of Darfurians and the the talks and meetings going on about that in Africa are successful.