Annan pushes Sudan to accept UN Darfur force

BANJUL, July 2 (Reuters) UN Secretary General Kofi Annan tried today to persuade Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir to reverse what he calls his ''incomprehensible'' opposition to a UN force to stop heavy bloodshed in Darfur.

Annan, who officials said was meeting Bashir on the fringes of an African Union summit, said yesterday that Darfur was ''one of the worst nightmares in recent history.'' No details were immediately available of the meeting.

The summit in Gambia's steamy seaside capital has been dominated by the intractable Darfur crisis and rising tension in Somalia after Islamist forces conquered Mogadishu.

AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said at the summit opening that the 53-nation pan-African body must take urgent action to deal with the two conflicts.

Annan and the AU hope to persuade Bashir to allow a strong UN force to take over peacekeeping duties at the end of September from an overstretched, under-resourced African force which has been unable to stem the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

But the Sudanese leader has issued a series of uncompromising rejections of foreign troops, the latest last Thursday, and they cannot be deployed without his consent.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in three years of rape, murder and pillage in Sudan's huge western region and 2.5 million driven from their homes into squalid refugee camps.

Western powers, the United Nations and analysts all say the misery can only be stopped by deployment of a strong U.N. force.

But diplomats in Banjul said the international community had little leverage to apply against Sudan.

Khartoum says the deployment would be a Western invasion, attracting Islamic militants and creating an Iraq-like quagmire.

Konare called for a May 5 peace agreement between the Khartoum government and one Darfur rebel movement to be implemented urgently.

The agreement has been undermined by its rejection by two other rebel groups and bloodshed has continued.

AU ATTACKED AU forces have been attacked in the refugee camps and by the rebels who did not sign the May 5 deal.

Konare said disputes between Sudan and Chad, which borders Darfur, were a major contributor to the conflict. On Saturday Khartoum said it would expel Chadian members of the AU force.

Libyan sources said Bashir and Chadian leader Idriss Deby held talks at the summit on Saturday mediated by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. But no details were made public.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when mostly non-Arab tribes rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated Khartoum government of neglect. The government retaliated by arming mainly Arab militia known as Janjaweed who are blamed for a campaign of murder and rape.

The summit, which is expected to end late on Sunday, will offer strong support to Somalia's weak interim government but there seems scant chance of substantial progress in reducing tension with newly powerful Islamist forces.

The AU says it will not deal directly with the Islamists, who control Mogadishu and a large swathe of central-southern Somalia since defeating U.S. backed warlords in early June.

It urges dialogue between the government and the Islamists.

But the interim administration says a hardline takeover of the Islamist leadership has prejudiced talks later this month.

The Banjul summit will also consider a report by an AU panel of legal experts recommending that former Chadian leader Hissene Habre be tried for political murder and torture in Africa and not Belgium, which had requested his extradition from Senegal.

Habre was ousted by Deby in 1990. Two years later, a Chadian government inquiry accused Habre's government of 40,000 political killings and 200,000 cases of torture.

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