Global Policy Forum

The human rights situation in war-torn Sudan is worsening, a U.N. investigator said on Wednesday, urging nations with oil firms operating in the northeast African nation to step up the search for peace.

''No matter what oil companies do in terms of providing such social services as hospitals, schools and roads in the area where they operate, their doing business in a war-torn country ... will continue to face international criticism until military warfare ends,'' U.N. rights prober Gerhart Baum said.

Sudan has been mired for 18 years in civil war pitting government forces against the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which wants greater autonomy for the mostly animist and Christian south from the mainly Muslim, Arabic-speaking north.

The conflict, which has intensified in recent months, has cost up to 2 million lives and displaced millions more.

Human rights and church groups have long charged that oil firms, by funneling revenues to the government, were helping fund the fighting.

Baum, appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights, agreed, saying exploitation of Sudan's oil reserves ''has led to a worsening of the conflict, which has also turned into a war for oil.''

Canada, China, France Iran, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Sweden are among the countries in which oil companies doing business in Sudan are registered, according to oil industry compilations.

In his report to the 189-nation U.N. General Assembly, Baum said the fighting left Sudanese civilians living under appalling conditions and urged the United States, the European Union and regional groups to also ''increase their engagement in the search for a peaceful solution.''

The United States, which bans U.S. firms from doing business in Sudan, last month allowed the U.N. Security Council to lift separate sanctions, imposed on Sudan after militants tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995.

Washington gave its green light to the council while seeking help from Khartoum for its fight against Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant it blames for Sept. 11 hijack attacks on the United States. Bin Laden had lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996 but is now believed to be in Afghanistan.

But the United Nations this week accused Sudanese government forces of three days of bombing raids on unarmed civilians in southern Sudan while U.N. relief workers were trying to distribute food aid to tens of thousands of hungry villagers.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Tuesday acknowledged criticisms of Sudan over the practice of slavery, denial of humanitarian access and religious discrimination, but said Sudan had taken steps against terrorism.

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