UN envoys to press Bashir on Darfur force command

KHARTOUM, June 17 (Reuters) UN Security Council members landed in Khartoum today looking for assurances for speedy deployment of at least 20,000 UN and African Union police and troops to Sudan's violent Darfur region.

The group of some of the world's most senior diplomats has scheduled talks with senior Sudanese officials and a two-hour session with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir today.

After months of talks, threats and negotiations, Khartoum agreed to a joint force for Darfur, but said that most troops should come from Africa and command and control would be under the African Union.

Security Council members are reluctant to fund a mission where the United Nations does not have overall control.

Darfur rebels told the Security Council not to believe glib words from the government. ''They should put more pressure on the Khartoum government and not rely on Khartoum's statements alone,'' said rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) senior figure Ahmed Abdel Shafie.

He said the force had to have UN command to be credible.

Since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen difference movements, hindering a joint AU-UN push to reenergise a peace process.

Law and order has collapsed in Darfur with almost daily ambushes on aid convoys and even a struggling AU peacekeeping operation has come under attack, losing dozens of vehicles and equipment.

The Security Council has not yet ruled out the threat of UN sanctions on Sudan, and diplomats said there had been real discussions about imposing a no-fly zone in Darfur and an arms embargo on the entire country.

Aid agencies worry a no-fly zone would endanger the world's largest humanitarian operation in the vast west, where most staff, and even supplies, are moved by air because of banditry on the roads.

Sudan's south, which signed a deal to end a separate and bloodier civil war in January 2005, also worry about the effect of sanctions on efforts to rebuild the war-torn south and to transform their guerrilla soldiers into a modern army.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglecting the remote region bordering Chad. International experts estimate some 200,000 have died over four years of rape, killing, looting and disease, which has driven 2.5 million from their homes.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a junior government minister accused of colluding with a Darfur militia leader in war crimes.

REUTERS SW HS1430