China presses Sudan over Darfur peacekeepers

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - China, under international pressure to help end conflict in Darfur, made a rare call on its Sudanese ally on Sunday to do more to allow foreign peacekeepers to deploy to the region.

But there was no respite in the fighting and the United Nations said it feared for thousands of civilians after reports that Sudan's forces bombed a rebel-held area in western Darfur.

China's envoy to Darfur, in a departure from Beijing's usual public diplomatic vagueness, made an unusual rebuke to Khartoum during a visit there and urged Sudan to remove obstacles to full deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force.

"Rolling out the hybrid peacekeeping operation and resolving the Darfur issue require the joint efforts of all sides," Liu Guijin told China's official Xinhua news agency.

"First, the Sudan government should cooperate better with the international community and demonstrate greater flexibility on some technical issues. Next, anti-government organizations in the Darfur region should return to the negotiating table."

China's role in Sudan has come under renewed attention since film director Steven Spielberg quit as an artistic director to the 2008 Beijing Olympic games, saying China had failed to use its sway in Khartoum to seek peace in Darfur.

China is a big investor in Sudan's oil industry and is its largest weapons supplier.

International experts estimate that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven been from their homes since mostly non-Arab Darfur rebels took up arms five years ago.

Even as the Chinese envoy spoke, powerful Sudanese presidential assistant Nafie Ali Nafie rejected any notion of accepting non-African troops in the UNAMID peacekeeping force until all African soldiers have deployed to Darfur.

Western countries accuse Sudan of using conditions such as the composition of the force as delaying tactics. So far, just 9,000 of an eventual 26,000 peacekeepers are on the ground.

BOMBING REPORTS

The United Nations said on Sunday it had received reports of aerial bombing in the Jabel Moun area in western Darfur, a region where Sudan launched an offensive on February 8 to retake rebel-held areas.

"We are gravely concerned for the safety of thousands of civilians in this area," the U.N. statement said.

Residents say at least 114 people have been killed in the offensive, but the army says many of those were rebels in civilian clothing. Thousands of people have fled the fighting, some into neighboring Chad.

U.N. officials estimated some 20,000 people were in Jabel Moun. They said the bombing occurred in spite of assurances from Khartoum on Sunday that civilians would be allowed to leave the area. UNAMID was seeking similar assurances from the rebels.