Rice angered after US officials manhandled in Sudan

KHARTOUM, July 21 (Reuters) – Sudanese security manhandled U.S. officials and journalists outside a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday, prompting Rice to demand an apology.

“It makes me very angry to be sitting with their president and have this happen,” Rice told reporters on her plane before leaving Khartoum for Darfur. Earlier, she told reporters she wanted an apology.

Sudanese guards and officials shoved U.S. journalists away from the Bashir meeting and slammed the wooden doors to his palace in their faces.

Some U.S. officials were also blocked for several minutes before the Sudanese agreed to allow Rice and aides in. The media was later allowed to witness briefly the talks.

Sudanese officials were not immediately available for comment on the scuffle.

Rice’s trip to Sudan is the highest-level visit by a U.S. official in a year.

The country’s new government was sworn in July 9 after the settlement of a two-decades-old north-south civil war in which 2 million people died.

While congratulating Khartoum on the end of that conflict, Washington has remained firm that Sudan most do more to end a separate conflict in Darfur.

Attacks have abated this year in western Sudan as African Union military monitors have increasingly deployed around the arid region the size of France.

But Andrew Natsios, the top U.S. aid official, said the drop-off was largely because most villages had already been razed. He said he suspects the Sudanese government still supports militia in Darfur accused of widespread rape, murder and pillage.

Rice has demanded Sudan’s new government speak out against the abuse and punish the attackers, and, to highlight the U.S. concern, she will meet rape victims at one of the largest camps in Darfur on Thursday.