UN hopes Sudan will allow peacekeepers to Darfur

ANTANANARIVO, Mar 19 (Reuters) United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the Sudanese government today to back plans to deploy UN peacekeepers in its troubled western Darfur region.

''I hope we will have the cooperation of the Sudanese government,'' he said when asked about Darfur at the end of a 4-day visit to the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar.

The African Union (AU), whose 7,000-strong peacekeeping force has proved too small and ill-equipped to quell the Darfur fighting, recently voted to extend its mission until September 30 then support its replacement by a beefed-up UN force.

But Sudan has rejected UN peacekeepers entering Darfur before a peace deal is struck at AU-mediated talks in Nigeria with the two main Darfuri rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

Annan said the 6-month extension of the AU mission would give the United Nations time to prepare its force for Darfur.

But he also said the situation was critical.

Tens of thousands have died and 2 million have been forced from their homes in a civil war that has wrought havoc on Sudan's vast Darfur region since February 2003.

''The security situation in Darfur is worsening,'' he told reporters.

Annan said he knew Khartoum was ''not so hot'' on the idea of UN peacekeepers in Darfur but their deployment in south Sudan to implement a 2005 north-south peace deal was a good precedent.

Annan hoped Khartoum and the Darfur rebels could strike a deal in the Nigeria ''as soon as possible''.

Separately, Annan said he hoped a European peacekeeping force would be put in place to join UN peacekeepers ahead of planned June elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Congo is reeling from a five-year war that split the country between invading armies and rebel groups and killed more than 3 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

''We need a European force. We are organising very important elections in June. We will need all the assistance we can get,'' Annan said.

The United Nations has a 17,000-strong peacekeeping force -- its largest anywhere -- in Congo, but says it is overstretched in a nation the size of western Europe.

Reuters LR GC1554