Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through Khartoum, protesting plans to deploy UN peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top UN and US envoys in the country.
The Sudanese government also increased its opposition to the deployment, with a top official warning on Wednesday that violence will only increase if UN troops move in to replace African Union peacekeepers.
"If the UN arrives the troubles will spread in the region," Mohamed Elsamani, Sudan's minister of state for foreign affairs, said in Nairobi.
PHOTO: AP
Officials from the EU, the US and the African Union, along with Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, held talks in Brussels aimed at spurring the faltering Darfur peace negotiations.
Bigger force
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said both the EU and Washington wanted to have a bigger peacekeeping force in place in Darfur, but it had to coincide with achieving a lasting peace deal between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government.
"We hope that the Sudanese government will not resist," Zoellick said. "We hope that the Sudanese government will recognize how this is in its interest to end the violence."
A beleaguered 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force operates in Darfur, where three years of violence has left some 180,000 dead -- most from disease and hunger -- and displaced another 2 million from their homes.
The African Union force has faced severe funding and logistical problems, and its mandate expires at the end of March. The Security Council has recommended that the UN start planning to take over peacekeeping.
In Khartoum, some 30,000 people marched from Martyrs Square to the offices of the UN, threatening to fight any UN force deployed in Darfur. They demanded the removal of the top UN envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the US charge d'affaires.
"Death to invaders" and "Our country will be their graveyard," many in the crowds chanted on Wednesday, some waving automatic weapons in the air. Some carried banners reading "death to America" and "resistance and jihad [holy war]." A heavy police and security presence closed down roads leading to Western embassies in the city.
The march was organized by the Popular Organization for the Defense of the Homeland and the Faith, a pro-government umbrella group of religious, civil and women's movements and political parties, including the ruling party.
"We know the Americans and the British are too scared to send troops to Sudan after what has happened to them in Afghanistan and in Iraq, but even if they send pure Muslim or Arab troops we will consider them invaders and will fight them," Fatahi Khalil, the secretary-general of the organization, told the cheering crowds.
Conflict
The conflict in Darfur -- a large region of western Sudan -- began when two rebel groups rose up against rule by the Khartoum government, claiming discrimination against Darfur's ethnic African population.
Government troops launched a crackdown, and Arab militias known as the Janjaweed began a campaign of violence, burning ethnic African villages and driving out, killing and raping the residents. The Sudanese government is widely alleged to have unleashed the Janjaweed, though it denies the accusation.
Numerous rounds of peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, have been stalled by internal divisions in the rebel movements.
"We cannot continue the situation in Darfur as it is now," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said after the talks in Brussels. "We have to provide a roadmap for the Abuja peace process."
African Union Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said a new plan would help speed up peace talks so a settlement could be reached to allow for a reinforced peacekeeping mission under a UN flag.
The US and EU have said they could provide logistical support to an expanded UN mission.
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