How Do You Spell Relief?

L-I-B-Y-A? Who'd a thunk it?

Facing resistance by Sudan's government, the Bush administration has turned to Libya to help mount a $100 million relief operation for the starving and harassed people of Darfur in western Sudan, a White House official said yesterday.

President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said "there is probably more to come" than the initial $100 million dedicated to the region where the US Agency for International Development estimates 350,000 might starve by next spring.

[...]

Until recently, such a program would have been impossible. Libya was under sanctions by the United Nations and the United States, and Moammar Khadafy's government and the US administration had no relations.

Libya decided last December to dispose of its deadliest weapons, and the two countries are in the process of establishing normal diplomatic relations.

Yet more fallout from the "illegitimate" war on terror, no doubt, even though the Boston Globe declines to mention this possibility. But then, I guess we're lucky they are reporting on this issue at all.