Condoleezza Rice today demanded a full apology from the Sudanese President after members of her entourage were allegedly roughed up by guards at a diplomatic meeting.

Jim Wilkinson, a senior adviser to the US Secretary of State, was grabbed and thrown against a wall at the entrance to President Omar al-Bashir’s palace in the capital Khartoum.

US officials said that the security guards elbowed and pushed them, barring advisers and the press from entering the meeting by slamming closed the residence's wooden doors.

An attempt was also made to seize tapes from a National Public Radio reporter before Sean McKormack, Miss Rice's spokesman, and others intervened.

"Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing and we don’t appreciate being manhandled at the front door," a fuming Mr Wilkinson told reporters.

"Diplomacy 101 says you don’t rough your guests up ... especially the press."

Miss Rice demanded an apology from the Sudanese authorities before setting off for the war-ravaged western province of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have been killed in the past 18 months. She is due to meet rape victims at a refugee camp, as she steps up pressure on the Government to denounce and tackle the continuing abuse.

"They had no right to manhandle my staff and the press," Miss Rice said. "It makes me very angry to be sitting there with their president and have this happen."

The Secretary of State is visiting Sudan to meet members of the newly-unified Sudanese government.

President el-Bashir has been blamed for recruiting and equipping rebel guerrillas, notably the Janjaweed militia, to massacre rural villagers and burn their homes in Darfur. He denies Government involvement, but the United States and international organizations say his military sent helicopter gunships to bomb small villages before rebels swept in with horses, guns and knives.

Prior to her meeting with Mr el-Bashir, Miss Rice said that the situation on the ground - although still considered genocide - was improving.

"We are not where we were a year ago," she said. "We are in a different circumstance and the United States has spent a great deal of money and a lot of diplomatic and other energy to try and bring this conflict to a conclusion."

Sudan formed a new reconciliation government earlier this month, following a peace agreement to end the 21-year-year civil war between the Muslim north and the mainly Christian south that has led to at least two million deaths.

The attacks in the western provinces have also declined, although Andrew Natsios, a US aid official, today said that was largely because most of the villages had now been destroyed.

Khidir Haroun Ahmed, chief of the Sudanese mission to the United States, said: "It is not our intention in any way to bar the press from doing its job."

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