Sudan today welcomed plans to bolster beleaguered African Union troops in Darfur with United Nations money, equipment and expertise.

Humanitarian workers hope that a deal struck between UN and AU officials in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa could eventually allow the formation of a joint peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled western region where more than 200,000 people have died in three and a half years of fighting.

However, the Sudanese Foreign Minister insisted the deal made no provision for the deployment of UN peacekeepers.

Lam Akol told state-controlled radio: "There should be no talk about a mixed force. What we are discussing and what is agreed upon, is an African Union force assisted by the United Nations.

"We have not actually overcome the question of converting the African Union force into a United Nations one."

So far Khartoum has rejected proposals to send more than 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace an overstretched force of 7,000 African troops.

They have failed to protect Darfur’s civil population in a conflict that has already crossed into Chad and is threatening to become a regional war, engulfing the Central African Republic.

Rebels from the farming tribes of Darfur launched a revolt in 2003 against the Arab-dominated Government in Khartoum, which they accused of neglecting their interests.

Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjawid militias - nomadic, Arab fighters - in a scorched earth policy directed at villages that supported the rebellion. Since then two million people have fled their homes for squalid aid camps.

Colonel Garba Ahmed, sector commander of the AU force based in El Geneina, West Darfur, said today that the agreement would provide much needed relief.

However, he said that improved resources could only go so far when his troops were limited by a weak mandate and the warring parties refused to sign up to peace.

"The best case is more troops, more equipment and an enhanced mandate to help us do our job," he said.

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