UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the opening of the two-day 60-nation conference that peace accords around the world often collapse into fighting, and urged more aid to bolster the January North-South peace deal that ended 21 years of war.

?Over the past three decades, no fewer than half of all post-conflict situations have reverted back to war within five years of the signing of a peace agreement,? Annan told delegates including Sudanese government and rebel leaders. A report by the UN and World Bank, backed by Khartoum and the former rebel Sudan People?s Liberation Movement (SPLM), says Sudan needs $2.6 billion in aid in the 2.5 years to the end of 2007 to help build everything from roads to schools. More than two million people were killed and four million displaced by the war pitting the mainly animist and Christian south against the Arab north in a conflict complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

And Annan said Khartoum and the SPLM had to cooperate ?under the shadow of Darfur?. He said the situation in the western region was ?extremely grave, with continuing abuse of the civilian population and attacks against humanitarian workers?. He said that allegations of human rights crimes in Darfur, referred by the United Nations to the International Criminal Court (ICC), were ?not aimed at the people, nor their government ... nor Islam, as some have implied?. Last week Annan gave the ICC a sealed list of 51 people accused of atrocities in Darfur, where Washington says genocide has taken place. Sudan?s First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha said late on Sunday that donors should not be reluctant because of Darfur. He declined to answer a question about the ICC. ?Sudan needs help,? Taha said. ?And when people in Darfur see that the prize for peace is support and encouragement by the international community, I think that?s a very important incentive for peace to prevail in Darfur.? Under the January North-South peace deal, Sudan and the SPLM will set up a coalition government, decentralise power, share revenues from oil production and form joint military units.

Significant new aid

The $ 2.6 billion in the aid request is about a third of estimated reconstruction needs of $ 7.9 billion. Most of the cash will come from Sudan?s oil output of 320,000 barrels per day. In the south, 90 per cent of people live in poverty, only about a third of young adults are literate and one child of every four dies before the age of five. Last week, a senior US official said Washington and other rich donors would pledge significant new aid for southern Sudan but added that any worsening of the conflict in Darfur would hamper that help.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will attend the Oslo talks today. The Darfur crisis was triggered in February 2003 when rebel groups took up arms against the government in a struggle over power and scarce resources. Khartoum retaliated by arming nomadic Arab militia who are accused of a campaign of murder, rape and arson against villagers. More than two million people have fled their homes and tens of thousands have died.

Alister DOYLE

FACTBOX

<B>One of Africa?s neediest cases</B>

■ <B>POVERTY: </B>

Poverty rate in the south is about 90 percent (50 percent in north).

Sudan is ranked 139th out of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Programme?s human development index. The HDI focuses on three measurable dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living. The HPI-1 - which measures human poverty in developing countries - values Sudan at 31.6 percent, which ranks the country 51st among 95 developing countries for which the index has been calculated.

■ <B>FOOD: </B>

One in three people in the south rely on food aid. Chronic malnutrition among the under fives is 48 percent in the south (35 percent in the north). Although the south is primarily dependent on subsistence agriculture about 47 percent of households do not have livestock.

■ <B> HEALTH: </B>

One in four children born in southern Sudan die before the age of five, 48 per cent from water related diseases. Children in Sudan have a mere 25 percent chance of living to 65. There is less than one doctor per 100,000 people in the south (1 to 2 in Darfur and 25 in Kenya). Sudan is one of the few countries to have seen access to safe water decline in the past decade. Many rural people pay as much as half their family income on water, often of dubious quality.