Sudan on Monday accepted the second phase of a UN plan to bring stability to Darfur that will add 3,000 UN troops to an under-manned African Union force in the war-torn western region.
The long-awaited acceptance came as US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte warned Khartoum that it faced isolation if it didn't accept all phases of the plan.
"Sudan has accepted the second phase of the agreement of UN support for the African force," Foreign Minister Lam Akol told a news conference, adding that this included the sticking point of deploying helicopter gunships.
A three-phase plan floated last year by former UN chief Kofi Annan is supposed to culminate with the deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster the embattled African force in Darfur, a region the size of France.
"The meeting in Addis Ababa was decisive, and its results constitute a breakthrough," said Akol of talks between the United Nations, the African Union (AU) and Khartoum in the Ethiopian capital on April 9.
The first two phases of the UN plan mainly involve logistical and technical support from the United Nations, but Sudan has yet to give its green light to the most contentious final phase of deploying UN troops in Darfur.
With phase two, the troop deployment should top 10,000.
Negroponte, who spent the last five days in Sudan, emphasised on his departure that all phases of the plan must be accepted.
"We must move quickly to a larger, hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force with a single, unified chain of command that conforms to UN standards and practices," Negroponte told reporters.
"The alternative for Sudan is continued and possibly even intensified international isolation," Negroponte warned.
The US official's visit comes after the United States held off on a decision to impose unilateral sanctions against Sudan to give UN chief Ban Ki-moon a last chance to convince Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur.
Ban was expected to hold talks in New York later on Monday with Alpha Oumar Konare, the chairman of the AU Commission, to discuss the details of the UN plan.
Sudan has come under renewed international pressure to accept the joint force, with the under-funded and ill-equipped African force failing to quell the violence.
On Sunday, an officer with the AU peacekeeping force was shot dead in Al-Fasher, the capital of north Darfur, almost a week after a Rwandan peacekeeper was killed.
The bloodiest attack on the 7,000-strong force came on April 1 when five Senegalese soldiers guarding a Darfur watering station were shot dead, prompting the Senegalese government to warn it might pull out its 500-man contingent.
A peace accord was signed by Khartoum in May 2006, but only one of the three negotiating rebel factions endorsed the deal, which has remained a dead letter and failed to quell the violence which erupted in February 2003.
Negroponte, who was to travel on to Chad, urged non-signatory rebels to join the negotiations and Khartoum to comply with the deal by disarming its proxy Janjaweed militia, accused of atrocities in Darfur.
"The government of Sudan must disarm the Janjaweed, the Arab militias that we all know could not exist without the Sudanese government's active support," he said.
At least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million driven from their homes, according to the United Nations. Khartoum disputes those figures, but some sources say the death toll is much higher.
