Bush to name special envoy for Darfur

NEW YORK, Sep 18 (Reuters) US President George W Bush, pressured by aid and rights groups, has decided to appoint a special envoy to try to end the violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, a US official said today.

The official, who asked not to be identified, declined to say who Bush had chosen but Sudan expert John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group said the front-runner was Andrew Natsios, a former Bush administration aid official.

Natsios, who resigned last December as head of the US Agency for International Development and is now a professor at Washington's Georgetown University, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Aid groups and some members of Congress have complained that the Bush administration's interest in Darfur had waned after the departure earlier this year of former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who focused on the issue.

The US official said Bush would likely announce the appointment of the envoy tomorrow in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly.

In three years of fighting in Darfur an estimated 200,000 people have been killed and millions forced from their homes.

Natsios, who focused much of his time as USAID chief on the crisis in Sudan, visited Darfur in 2004 with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who later labeled what was happening there as genocide.

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