SUDAN: Sudan has stepped up opposition to a UN peacekeeping mission for Darfur, warning that it would consider any country's pledge to supply police or troops to a UN force "a hostile act" and a "prelude to an invasion" of the Islamic country.
The Sudanese statement comes more than two weeks after the United Nations sent a letter urging scores of governments to commit troops to a Darfur mission.
Khartoum reiterates its "total rejection" of an August 31st Security Council resolution authorising a UN force of about 20,000 for the troubled region.
In response, the US on Thursday convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council and accused Sudan of defying the will of the 15-nation body.
"I think they are trying to intimidate troop-contributing countries," said US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.
"Obviously if no one volunteers to contribute forces to the Darfur mission [ there won't be one] regardless of what Security Council does."
Mr Bolton sought to rally council support for a statement deploring Sudan's attempt "to intimidate potential" troop contributors.
Mr Bolton's action was the latest attempt by the Bush administration to increase international pressure on Sudan to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, on a tour of the Middle East, has urged Arab leaders to help persuade Khartoum to let the United Nations intervene in the violence in Darfur. President Bush's special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, met on Thursday with UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
But other Security Council members cautioned the United States not to overreact, noting that Khartoum has been co-operating with UN efforts to support a smaller African peacekeeping force of 7,000 in Darfur.
In a separate, more conciliatory letter on Tuesday, Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir told Mr Annan that he welcomed the more modest UN plan to provide equipment, communications and a team of about 200 advisers to the African force.
Darfur has been the scene of some of the worst violence in Africa in more than a decade.
The Sudanese government, backed by local Arab militia, has mounted a bloody counterinsurgency campaign against civilians suspected of supporting Darfur rebel groups.
The conflict has left as many as 450,000 people dead and driven more than two million people from their homes. The African Union peacekeepers have been struggling, with little success, to stem the violence in Darfur. - LA Times-Washington Post service)