China, under international pressure to help end conflict in Darfur, made a rare call on its ally Sudan on Sunday to do more to allow foreign peacekeepers to deploy to the region.
But there was no respite in the fighting and the UN said it feared for thousands of civilians after reports that Sudan's forces bombed a rebel-held area in western Darfur.
China's envoy to Darfur, in a departure from Beijing's usual public diplomatic vagueness, made an unusual rebuke to Khartoum during a visit and urged Sudan to remove obstacles to full deployment of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force.
"Rolling out the hybrid peacekeeping operation and resolving the Darfur issue require the joint efforts of all sides," Liu Guijin (
"First, the Sudan government should cooperate better with the international community and demonstrate greater flexibility on some technical issues. Next, anti-government organizations in the Darfur region should return to the negotiating table," he said.
China's role in Sudan has come under renewed attention since film director Steven Spielberg quit as an artistic director to this year's Beijing Olympic games, saying China had failed to use its sway in Khartoum to seek peace in Darfur.
China is a big investor in Sudan's oil industry and is its largest weapons supplier.
International experts estimate that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab Darfur rebels took up arms five years ago.
Even as the Chinese envoy spoke, powerful Sudanese presidential assistant Nafie Ali Nafie rejected the notion of non-African troops in the UNAMID peacekeeping force until all African soldiers have deployed to Darfur.
Western countries accuse Sudan of using conditions such as the composition of the force as delaying tactics. So far, just 9,000 of an eventual 26,000 peacekeepers are on the ground.
The UN said on Sunday it had received reports of aerial bombing in the Jabel Moun area in western Darfur, a region where Sudan launched an offensive on Feb. 8 to retake rebel-held areas.
"We are gravely concerned for the safety of thousands of civilians in this area," the UN statement said.
Residents say at least 114 people have been killed in the offensive, but the army says many of those were rebels in civilian clothing. Thousands of people have fled the fighting, some into neighboring Chad.
UN officials estimated some 20,000 people were in Jabel Moun. They said the bombing occurred in spite of assurances from Khartoum on Sunday that civilians would be allowed to leave the area. UNAMID was seeking similar assurances from the rebels.
"The risks at this stage to civilians are unacceptably high. The solution for Darfur's problems can never be a military one," the statement said.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), meanwhile, said it had downed a helicopter north of el-Geneina in West Darfur on Sunday. Sudan's army said engine trouble caused the aircraft to crash land. It said the pilot escaped unharmed.
"The pilot tried to go back to el-Geneina when the second engine failed and the helicopter crash landed," the spokesman said, ruling out any rebel involvement.
The delays to deploying the UNAMID force mean it is struggling to live up to the high expectations of Darfuris that it will do better to secure western Sudan than the previous force from only the African Union.
Scandinavian units were refused entry by Khartoum and a Thai battalion is ready but still waiting for permission to deploy.
Mutrif Siddig, a senior Sudanese Foreign Ministry official, said on Sunday that the force had commitments for twice the number of African soldiers needed so that a majority of the troops would be from Africa.
"Now we have 10,000 [troops] already there [in Darfur] and we have in addition two units from Egypt and Ethiopia ready ... other African countries have offered 18 battalions," Siddig said. "That is double the number we need."
Siddig said Sudan would look to East Asian countries if the force needed additional troops.
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