Sudan slams foreign intervention in Darfur

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Sudan's interior minister said his country rejects the deployment in Darfur of foreign forces, either African or Arab.

"My government will not accept any foreign military presence in Sudan regardless of the nationality of the troops, be it African or Arab," Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein said in an interview Friday with the London-based Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, which is monitored in Beirut.

He said Khartoum agreed with the African Union to deploy observers in the province of Darfur in western Sudan, where the world's worst humanitarian crisis is taking place, according to a U.N. account.

But he said reports about deploying some 2,000 African troops in Darfur "are nothing but rumors circulated by press agencies and there is nothing official about them."

He stressed that any decision to be taken by the African Union over Darfur "will be meaningless unless it is approved by us."

The United Nations served Khartoum a one-month deadline to settle the crisis in Darfur or face sanctions.

The U.N. wants Khartoum to stop the massacres committed by the pro-government Arab Janjaweed militia against black Africans and bring the assassins to trial.