Sudan May Allow U.N. Force In Darfur

Military Experts Examining Overture From Khartoum

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 -- Sudan's president has suggested that he would be willing to accept a peacekeeping force with United Nations troops in Darfur, where his counterinsurgency campaign has left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and millions homeless.

President Omar al-Bashir has rejected calls for foreign troops and U.N. intervention to end the bloodshed. But under mounting pressure from the Bush administration to respond to U.N. plans for a cease-fire, Bashir appeared to accept some of Secretary General Kofi Annan's proposals in a letter sent over the weekend.

U.S. and U.N. diplomats were guarded in their reactions to the letter, which was made public Tuesday.

Although Bashir wrote to Annan that he would accept a proposal for U.N. forces to bolster African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, the Sudanese president wants the plan to be implemented through a three-member panel on which Khartoum has a seat. Diplomats said that arrangement could effectively give Sudan veto power over how the plan is implemented.

"While we would like to be cautiously optimistic, we have heard positive sounds before like this before," said Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. "We need to see actions on the ground, and we need a U.N. presence in Darfur now."

Chang said Annan or one of his advisers will brief the Security Council on Wednesday with an assessment of Bashir's letter.

In the meantime, U.S. military experts and U.N. force commanders were studying the letter, diplomats said.

Bashir's letter came after a meeting in Khartoum earlier this month with Andrew S. Natsios, President Bush's special adviser on Sudan.

Natsios said he urged Bashir to accept all aspects of Annan's plan and warned that if he did not do so by the end of the year, the United States would take a more aggressive stand.

"We have told the Sudanese that we have to move along to our own strategic processes in the United States government, and we will do that beginning in the new year if we do not see some kind of progress on Kofi's plan between now and the end of the year," Natsios said last week.

U.S. and U.N. officials have long suspected that Bashir may try to buy time until Annan leaves office at the end of the year, then begin new negotiations for more favorable terms with Annan's successor, Ban Ki Moon of South Korea.

Darfur has experienced some of the worst violence in Africa in more than a decade. The Sudanese government, backed by local Arab militia, has mounted a violent campaign against civilians suspected of supporting Darfur rebel groups. The conflict has left as many as 450,000 people dead and has driven more than 2 million people from their homes.

Last week, Annan asked the Sudanese leader for his formal consent for a joint African Union-U.N. force of at least 22,000 troops and police. Bashir has opposed a force made up of only U.N. troops, saying it would be tantamount to an invasion of his country.

The idea of a combined force was endorsed by African nations in October, but Bashir has been unclear about whether he would accept it.

In the letter, made public by Annan's office in New York, Bashir wrote that he is ready to begin talks on a cease-fire and explicitly accepted a joint force.