UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is putting pressure on Sudan to accept non-African U.N. peacekeepers to quell violence in the western region of Darfur.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has consistently cited sovereignty concerns in refusing non-African peacekeepers, preferring African Union forces.
However, Ban has dispatched two senior envoys to Lisbon where a European Union-Africa summit is scheduled this weekend, with instructions to push for U.N. involvement, the BBC said.
The United Nations is scheduled to mass a 26,000-strong force later this month to quell the insurgency by various militias in the conflict that has claimed some 200,000 lives since 2003.
The U.N. plan Bashir is resisting calls for the contingent to come from Nepal, Norway, Sweden and Thailand, the report said.
Sudanese U.N. ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad told the BBC the United Nations was putting blame in the wrong place.
"Whenever (the United Nations) has a failure, like to provide finance ... the shortest thing is to blame Sudan, say Sudan is dragging its feet," he said.
