US Rice to keep pressuring Sudan to accept UN forces

Oct 24, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intends to keep pressuring the Sudanese government to allow U.N. peacekeepers to enter war-torn Darfur to try to ease the violence and humanitarian crisis in the area, the State Department said Tuesday.

She is looking for ways to overcome resistance by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. “We believe that is a prerequisite step in order to improve the situation,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

U.S. envoy Andrew Natsios has returned from an inspection trip to Sudan and from talks with Arab leaders in Cairo, and Rice is looking to him for “new approaches, new initiatives, new ideas,” McCormack said.

Rice also intends to confer by telephone with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose top envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, was ordered to leave the country after accusing the army of violating U.N. resolutions on the war in Darfur, the spokesman said.

China also is “very interested” in getting the U.N. force into Darfur, where it would take over from and expand an African Union force; Arab League nations and Sudan’s neighbors have “a vested strategic interest in the situation in Sudan improving,” McCormack said.

The conflict in Darfur between government-backed Arab militia and the non-Arab population has killed about 200,000 people in three years and displaced some 2 million.

(AP)