SUDAN has 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 yesterday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, could allow the formation of a joint peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western region where more than 200,000 people have died in three and a half years of fighting.

The Sudanese Foreign Minister insisted, however, that 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 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 been unable 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, the sector commander of the AU force based in El Geneina, West Darfur, said yesterday 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.

He was speaking close to a hospital where a handful of villagers from Sirba were being treated for gunshot wounds following an attack by Janjawid and government troops a week ago. It provides a graphic account of how the AU is failing.

Villagers and residents of aid camps had sent warnings that tension was growing and an attack was imminent. The AU responded by sending a patrol but the Nigerian soldiers lacked the facilities to stay overnight.

Forty-eight hours later 35 Government trucks and dozens of mounted Janjawid fighters swept through the village and camps, killing at least 13 people.

Colonel Ahmed’s sector, close to the border with Chad, has become one of the most volatile parts of Darfur.

The conflict has destabilised parts of Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) as armed militias forge links with allies irrespective of borders. Chad is now planning to send troops across the border into the CAR to help it to fight off an invasion by Sudanese-backed rebels.

In a speech published yesterday, Pascal Yoadimnadji, the Prime Minister of Chad, called for a general mobilisation of troops. “We are witnessing a generalised war imposed by the Sudanese Government,” he said, stepping up the rhetoric and risking increasing the conflict.

Meanwhile, the UN’s most senior humanitarian official was in El Geneina at the end of a two-day trip to Darfur. Jan Egeland said that he hoped the deal would pave the way for a UN deployment. “So far it is an agreement for the UN to help the AU become more effective,” he said.

“Later on I hope that it could be a UN force or a UN-AU force well enough resourced, with a strong enough mandate to protect the civilian population and stop this carnage that we are seeing here in Darfur.”

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