KHARTOUM, 27 August 2006 — As pressure mounts on Sudan to accept UN troops in its violent Darfur region, the Khartoum government is closing ranks in defiance, raising fears of a deadlock that could hasten Darfur’s descent into chaos.

The top US diplomat on Africa, Jendayi Frazer, was to arrive in Khartoum yesterday carrying a strong message from President George W. Bush that President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir should drop his opposition to a UN takeover of a struggling African Union mission in Sudan’s west.

During a two-day visit, Frazer hopes to meet Sudanese officials ahead of a Security Council meeting on Monday to discuss a British draft resolution to deploy around 20,000 UN police and soldiers to Darfur. But as Frazer was due to arrive, government officials and state press stepped up their attacks on the United Nations and reiterated public refusals of any UN deployment.

“UNMIS (the UN mission in Sudan) position and statements were either chilly or biased in contrast to those of the African Union,” an editorial in state-owned Sudan Vision daily paper said yesterday.

And any reported divisions between Bashir and his deputy on a UN presence in Darfur have disappeared with Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha’s first direct and public rebuke of the international community.

“Dialogue is maintained with the international community and it is one of the principles of the foreign policy of Sudan, but it does not mean surrender and cancellation of the national identity and the national will,” the state news agency SUNA quoted Taha as saying on Thursday. AU and European diplomats say Taha had in private agreed last year to a UN takeover in Darfur once a peace deal was reached. Since the AU-brokered deal was signed in May, Taha had kept largely quiet on the issue.

In contrast Bashir has made speeches almost daily for the past few weeks, on each occasion making sure to repeat his rejection of the force.

One Western diplomat who declined to be named said: “I think there is little to be positive about at this stage.” Aid agencies say Darfur is more dangerous now for them than at any time during the 3-1/2 year conflict. Eleven aid workers have been killed since the peace accord was signed in May.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur accusing central government of marginalizing the remote region.

Bashir depicts a UN presence in Darfur as a Western attempt to colonize Sudan. But other politicians say his party is worried the troops would be used to arrest officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigating alleged war crimes in the region.

“(There are some who) don’t want to accept the UN forces if this at the end will mean the signature of their own death certificates,” said Ghazi Suleiman, a member of Parliament for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which formed a coalition government with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in 2005.

He said the SPLM would not be part of any confrontation with the international community and said privately Bashir’s only worry was about the mandate of the UN troops.