|TOP|The head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has appealed for aid to help struggling Sudan during a special two-week visit to the country.

Following a visit to the south of the country, still struggling to overcome the consequences of civil war, the cardinal is in the conflict-torn Darfur region this week visiting aid projects.

According to The Scotsman, O’Brien said that the plight of Sudan had fallen from the headlines and that aid had begun to dry up.

"Income to both charities and from government seems to be falling largely because of the outstanding demands for other things. Things like the tsunami have quite understandably turned people's attention elsewhere,” said Cardinal O’Brien.

|QUOTE|"I have been in Rwanda, Congo, Ethiopia, but I have never seen anything like this. This is the poorest country I have ever seen."

He added: "It is quite unbelievable how they survive at all. They are just waiting for the rest of the human race to wake up and see that something drastic must be done to help."

The cardinal has been visiting refugee camps each housing as many as 10,000 refugees in conditions of abject poverty.

Cardinal O’Brien called on African politicians to take action against the situation as they gather this week in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum for the African Union congress.

|AD|“The flowerbeds here are being tended for the African Union meeting. The politicians need to get out and see what the reality is and see at first hand what is going on, not just reading reports about the problem."

Darfur remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN, with more than two million people now living in makeshift camps or with host families after being forced to leave their homes. A massive 3.5 million people remain without food.

The African Union (AU) peace monitoring force of around 7,000 troops, hugely inadequate in a region the size of France, has also come under serious threat as the Union continues to face a huge financial shortfall.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, announced that the United Nations is assembling contingency plans to deploy a quick-reaction force to take over from the struggling African Union.

“We have started contingency planning to be ready if and when the decision is taken for us to go in," Annan told reporters.

A report presented to the Peace and Security Council of the African Union concluded that the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) would not continue longer than March if a huge cash injection was not found, with the report concluding that the operation might have to be handed over to the UN.

The Action by Churches Together/Caritas programme has, over the last 18 months, become one of the largest NGO emergency programmes in Darfur, where it has helped thousands forced to flee from the ongoing conflict.

“In the short term we have to provide the shelter, water and health care services, which protect vulnerable lives, but in the long term we must use our position to foster peace and reconciliation”, said Anthony Mahony, Humanitarian Officer for the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD).

With the situation remaining so precarious, the ACT/Caritas programme is stockpiling essential materials in order to support newly-displaced people and to allow them to fit their response according to the changing circumstances.

“It is crucial for CAFOD to stand by the people of Darfur as long as they are in need,” said Mahony.