The World Bank met Thursday with Sudanese leaders and international donors to review development aid to Sudan. Donors from 60 nations pledged US$4.5 billion (¤3.78 billion) in aid to Sudan in April 2005 after a peace deal ended Africa's longest-running civil war, between the government in the north and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the South. In meetings Thursday and Friday, officials from the World Bank, the United Nations, the United States and other donor countries were meeting with representatives of Sudan's north and south to discuss that aid and reconstruction and development efforts. The group will also talk about "constraints that have held back progress in realizing the immediate goals for the program," according to the World Bank, which is hosting the meetings at its Paris offices. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who was attending the meetings, said, "We cannot consider the (funding plan) without addressing the ongoing conflict in Darfur." The continuing conflict in Darfur has frustrated international donors and thwarted development progress. Three years of violence in the large region of western Sudan has left some 180,000 dead _ most from disease and hunger _ and displaced another 2 million, according to a report of the Associated Press.
