Gaddafi opposes foreign intervention in Darfur

OUAGADOUGOU, June 2 (Reuters) – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Thursday any intervention in Sudan’s Darfur region from outside Africa would exacerbate the crisis, adding that the continent was capable of dealing with its own problems.

“We are against any foreign intervention in Darfur because that would do nothing but pour oil on the fire,” Gaddafi said after a summit of heads of state from West and North Africa in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou.

“There are threats of intervention from outside which raise the chances of civil war in our region. We should be firmly opposed to all these foreign interventions … which aim to resolve our problems as if we weren’t grown up,” he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he was concerned about genocide in Darfur, where U.N. officials say some 180,000 people have died, but stopped short of offering military support beyond the aid Washington already provides.

The Bush administration is giving logistical help through NATO to African Union troops but has been criticised for not doing enough to end the atrocities in Darfur, where an estimated 2 million people have been forced from their homes by fighting.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick is this week making his second trip in a month to Darfur, where conflict broke out in February 2003 after rebels took up arms against Sudan’s Arab-dominated government.

“Those who want to do so should help us but those who want to humiliate us, to attack us, we say to them that we will cut off any warlike hand that is extended to us,” Gaddafi said.