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Afri can Union foreign ministers meet in New York today to decide whether to keep their 7 000 peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region, as pressure increases on the government in Khartoum to allow United Nations intervention.

“The government of Sudan must agree to the continuation of the AU force and transition to the UN,” said U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in a statement timed to coincide with worldwide rallies yesterday demanding Sudan allow UN peacekeepers into the western region.

The African contingent, hampered by a lack of mobility and firepower, has failed to stem fighting between government forces and rebels in Darfur that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and forced about 2,5-million people from their homes.

The AU mandate expires at the end of the month and the body says it wants to transfer duties to a larger UN force.

Sudanese President Umar Hassan al-Bashir rejects a UN Security Council resolution mandating a 21 000-strong international force in Darfur, saying it would be an affront to his nation's sovereignty. If the AU pulls out its peacekeepers before a UN force is in place, a security vacuum may be created in Darfur, a region the size of France which the UN says is the scene of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Sudan's government has told the UN it plans to deploy more than 20 000 of its own soldiers to pacify Darfur.

“We will not abandon our responsibilities,'' Nouredinne Mezni, an AU spokesman in Khartoum, said yesterday in a telephone interview. He refused to predict the meeting's outcome and said the ministers ``have wisdom to take the appropriate decision.''

The world is “fed up with watching no action on Darfur,'' former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Cable News Network from a rally in New York's Central Park yesterday. “While we have been watching rolling genocide, the international community really has not done enough,” she told CNN. “Sudan has a last chance to be on the right side of history or forever be on the wrong side.”

Thousands of people rallied in dozens of cities across the world, including London, New York, Dubai, Dublin and Melbourne, said organizers of “Global Day for Darfur.” The protest was backed by several international groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group.

“Killing time is killing people, UN forces for Darfur,” read one banner held aloft during a demonstration in London. The Darfur crisis started in February 2003 when rebels, demanding a greater share of power and wealth in Sudan, attacked government forces. The authorities in the capital, Khartoum, responded by organizing militias known as the Janjaweed in a campaign to wipe out the rebels.

The government and a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Minnawi, signed a peace accord on May 5.

Violence has escalated in recent weeks, with both government forces and the rebels who support the peace agreement fighting those who oppose it.

The UN Security Council on August 31 approved a plan to dispatch about 17 300 international troops and about 3 300 police officers to Darfur to replace the African Union force. Al-Bashir again rejected the UN resolution in a September 16 address to the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba, the official Sudan News Agency, SUNA, reported on its Web site. The resolution “will open the door for more violence and sedition and will lead to the disintegration” of Sudan, read SUNA's account of the president's speech. The Non-Aligned Movement groups more than 100 countries that aren't aligned to any major power.

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