Juba appeal

NAIROBI (AFP) - The Sudan People's Liberation Army called on the military regime in Khartoum to allow several thousand trapped civilians on the brink of starvation to leave the southern city of Juba, which the rebels have been keeping under siege for months. But in Khartoum, the minister of state in the president's office, Ghazi Salah Eddin, rejected the rebels' demands to evacuate the city, whose population has been swollen by refugees from fighting in the countryside.