"Since 2013, Mercy Corps has also maintained aid-delivery operations from Damascus into south-central Syria – with the consent of the Syrian government – serving more than 350,000 affected civilians".
The proceeds would be used to maintain aid flows when the IFF loans fell due for repayment.
Theresa May is committed to maintain aid spending; Ms Patel is, at the moment, prevented by law from doing trade-for-aid deals.
As a result, there is now an unusual cross-party consensus on maintaining aid spending at 0.7% of national income, regardless of how it is spent.
Partly because of this, David Cameron, the Tory leader, has faced surprisingly little pressure within his party to retreat from his commitment to maintain aid spending.
The MPs who sit on the select committee on international development are, on the whole, friendly cheerleaders untouched by any real political pressure, except to maintain aid spending at 0.7%.
But Africa is on the move and if we keep going on the whole Gleneagles agenda – maintain aid but remembering governance and economic growth – the continent will be transformed.
Nicholas Burns, a senior State Department official, said this week during a visit to Bogotá that the administration will ask Congress to maintain aid at its current level of some $600m a year until 2008.
Earlier the UK urged its EU allies to maintain aid for ordinary Egyptians.
In contrast, maintaining aid would be contingent on residing within village boundaries regardless of where within the village a person lived.
In one large camp, a water source maintained by aid agencies had broken down, but aid agencies were not able for several days to safely reach the site.
