International community urging Sudanese government to open humanitarian access to Southern areas

Officials from the U.S., African Union and the international community "are working with Sudan's government to open humanitarian access to" the country's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, where refugees "fleeing fighting between local militia and government troops" have gathered and are in need of food aid, VOA News reports. The officials are asking "Khartoum to approve a plan for humanitarian corridors as more than 140,000 new refugees have left for South Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia," the news service writes, adding that Princeton Lyman, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, "said there are ways to get food aid into Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile without Khartoum's consent, but they are inadequate to the need" (Stearns, 4/2). On Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved by voice vote a resolution (.pdf) urging an end to cross-border conflict and "calling for 'the government of Sudan to allow immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to South Kordofan, Blue Nile and all other conflict-affected areas of Sudan,'" Agence France-Presse reports (3/31).