The United States and Britain, ratcheting up the pressure on Sudan, threatened it today with sanctions and other punitive measures unless it agreed to accept a robust UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.
President George W. Bush, impatient at the failure to halt the violence in the troubled region, warned Sudan's president he had one last chance to avoid sanctions by agreeing to the deployment of a full joint UN-African Union force.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said talks would begin tomorrow on a new UN Security Council resolution to try to end the violence in Darfur.
"What is happening in Sudan at the moment is unacceptable, is appalling and is a scandal for the international community," Mr Blair told reporters. US State Department number two John Negroponte, on an African tour, reinforced the message by urging Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to back the deployment of international peacekeepers in Darfur and on the Chad/Central African Republic border.
Sudan agreed on Monday to a 'hybrid operation' in which 3,000 UN personnel and heavy support equipment would reinforce African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, but refused to accept the larger UN force, of some 10,000 more troops, that the Western powers believe are needed.
The 5,000 AU peacekeepers have been unable to stem the violence in Darfur, a territory as big as France, where at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless since 2003 in ethnic and political conflict triggered by a rebellion.
The violence has now spilled over to Chad and Central African Republic. Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said earlier in an interview in Dubai that the United States and Britain should help secure UN funds for the AU peacekeepers already on the ground in Darfur instead of pushing for a larger UN force.
Mr Bush, speaking at the US Holocaust Museum, said he had decided to give UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon more time to pursue diplomacy with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir but made clear his patience was limited.
"President Bashir should take the last chance by responding to the secretary general's efforts and to meet the just demands of the international community," Mr Bush said. "I'm looking at what steps the international community could take to deny Sudan's government the ability to fly its military aircraft over Darfur, and if we don't begin to see signs of good-faith commitments, we will hear calls for even sterner measures. The situation doesn't have to come to that," he said.