UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged donors yesterday to fund a bigger African force to help end bloodshed in Darfur, where experts say hundreds are still dying daily nine months after the mission first deployed.

A Government minister is to call on Sudanese authorities to comply with United Nations demands over the conflict in the region at a meeting today.

The UN World Food Program suspended food convoys to the Darfur region in western Sudan after rebel forces attacked the market town of Ghubaysh and the government retaliated, UN humanitarian officials said.

Sudan has indefinitely postponed the expulsion of the local directors of two British humanitarian organisations, the British Embassy confirmed today.

European Union foreign ministers were expected to back Washington’s get-tough approach on Darfur at a meeting today, dangling the threat of UN sanctions over Sudan’s government if it does not move to end the fighting in the region.

The UN envoy to Sudan urged the government to accept an international monitoring force with more than 3,000 troops to help prevent escalating militia attacks in the violence-wracked Darfur region.

A visiting American senior official has said his visit to a displaced persons camp in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region was “very disturbing” and said neither Sudan, the United Nations nor the international community were doing enough to address the crisis.

The United Nations begins a three-day fact-finding mission in troubled Darfur today to establish whether the Sudanese government has fulfilled its pledges to improve security and rein in Arab militia accused of months of atrocities.

AROUND 30,000 Sudanese victims of fresh attacks by Arab militia inside Darfur are threatening to cross into Chad unless the international community acts to protect them.

Sudanese authorities have restored aid deliveries to a camp for 90,000 displaced people in Darfur, UN officials said, three days after soldiers reportedly closed the camp following a mob killing of an alleged pro-government militiaman.

THE Arab League chief pledged support for Sudan's government before an emergency meeting on the violence that has killed thousands in that country's Darfur region.

A new agreement between the United Nations and Sudan requires the government to create safe areas in the crisis-ridden Darfur region within 30 days.

The UN special envoy to Sudan yesterday said he and Sudan's foreign minister had agreed a plan to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and avert UN sanctions.

RWANDAN president Paul Kagame is “unapologetic” about the role his troops have played in the war in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and has said he would send them back in if his country’s security were at stake.

The Dutch cabinet today met for crisis talks to discuss the damaging Srebrenica report which has prompted two ministers to consider resigning.

Negotiators from 178 nations reached a deal to salvage a treaty on combating global warming following marathon negotiations that ended today, a UN spokesman announced.

Delegates trying to rescue the Kyoto Protocol on world climate change were continuing their talks today after marathon negotiations which went on through the night.

Negotiators at the World climate change talks are approaching an agreement on the last solitary issue on rules for carrying out the Kyoto Protocol.

The world moved a step closer today to agreeing a political deal on rules for the Kyoto Protocol on curbing harmful climate change ... without the United States.

More than 100,000 e-mail protests have been sent to US President George W Bush since he abandoned the Kyoto agreement.