SUDAN: Sudan warned Britain and the United States not to interfere in its internal affairs yesterday after the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said he had not ruled out military aid to help combat the crisis in the Darfur region.
"I don't understand why Britain and the United States are systematically increasing pressure against us and not operating through the United Nations," the Sudanese Foreign Minister, Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail, said on a visit to Paris.
"\ pressure closely resembles the increased pressure that was put on Iraq [before the war]," he said.
Washington accuses Khartoum of backing the Janjaweed Arab militia in a campaign some US officials have described as ethnic cleansing against black African villagers in Darfur.
The United States has drafted a UN resolution that would impose an immediate travel and arms ban on militia members.
"We don't need any \ resolutions. Any resolutions from the Security Council will complicate things," Mr Ismail said.
Mr Blair yesterday stepped up the diplomatic pressure on Khartoum to deal effectively with what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"We have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can," Mr Blair said, adding he had not ruled out the possibility of military assistance to combat the growing humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
After long conflict between Arab nomads and black African farmers, rebel groups launched a revolt in February 2003 in the east of the oil-producing country. Janjaweed militias went on the rampage, driving black Africans into barren camps.
The United Nations estimates that the 15-month conflict has killed at least 30,000 people and displaced more than a million others.
Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that Mr Blair was drawing up plans for military intervention in Sudan, which could involve troops helping to distribute aid, lending logistical support to an African Union (AU) protection force or protecting refugee camps from marauding militia forces.
"We rule nothing out, but we are not at that stage yet," Mr Blair told a news conference in London.
"What we need to do in the short term is to get the government of Sudan to take the measures necessary to control the militias and to make sure the aid and assistance gets through," he said.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said yesterday that London was pressing the European Union to fund the AU mission and was looking at the possibility of sending an EU joint civilian/military team to "help the African Union plan and mount an effective mission".
Meanwhile, Pope John Paul sent an emissary to Darfur yesterday and called for all necessary aid to be given to the region.