Donors promised at least $2.6 billion to help Sudan recover after Africa's longest civil war at a 60-nation aid conference in Oslo, host Norway said today.
"Preliminary calculations show that we have been able to cover the shortfall of $2.6 billion," Norwegian Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson said at the opening session of the second day of the two-day talks.
"I think that's worth an applause already," she said, triggering clapping around the conference hall in an Oslo hotel attended by 60 nations.
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick told the conference Washington aimed to give $1 to $2 billion but that Sudan needed to bolster the January peace deal ending a 21-year war and to end attacks in the western region of Darfur.
"There is a chance to save this country," he said.
"This is a time for choosing for Sudan," he said, saying the country could take an upward spiral towards peace and development or a downwards spiral in which Sudan could "slip back into the depths".
Among major pledges yesterday, the European Commission promised about $765 million, Britain $545 million, Norway $250 million and the Netherlands $220 million, organisers said.
A report by the United Nations and World Bank, backed by the Khartoum government and the ex-rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, said Sudan needed $2.6 billion in aid from July 2005 to the end of 2007 to build everything from schools to roads.
Some of the cash was promised for immediate humanitarian needs or for longer-term projects and would not be part of the $2.6 billion total.
More than two million people were killed and four million displaced by the war that pitted the mainly animist and Christian south against the Arab north in a conflict complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.