In a rare, high-profile visit to the West, Sudan’s president today met with the pope and Italy’s premier, and offered to declare a cease-fire with Darfur rebels to coincide with the start of UN-backed peace talks next month.

A Sudanese Darfur rebel faction has demanded that the African Union (AU) extend its deadline for the concluding peace talks, as Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo pressured the warring sides to sign a proposed deal.

SECURITY in Sudan’s Darfur region is a “farce” with the government engaged in ethnic cleansing and rebel groups looting and abducting civilians in violation of an April cease-fire, a rights group said yesterday.

African Union monitors are investigating claims that the Sudanese military bombarded a village with helicopter gunships, driving terrified farmers from their homes, just days before the expiry of a United Nations deadline to end the violence in Darfur.

FOR the people of Sudan it remains to be seen whether the visit of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the last-minute commitments by the government of Sudan to allow access by international organisations and recent steps to arrest some members of the Janjaweed will translate into real action to end the cycle of violence, rape and killing.

SUDANESE President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said yesterday that Western nations were exploiting the Darfur conflict to gain control of resources like oil and gold in the arid region.

WHILE world leaders recently gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide, another horror story has been unfolding in Sudan.