Khartoum, Sudan ? Sudanese security officers roughed up members of Condoleezza Rice’s entourage Thursday and spoiled the African nation’s hopes of showing off a new peace deal and improving a bruised reputation with the United States.

The secretary of state gave Sudan’s foreign minister a 90-minute deadline to make a personal apology, and he met it.

Sudan got no promise from Rice that the United States would push to lift economic sanctions or remove the nation from the State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

Rice also visited a vast refugee camp in the western Darfur region, site of mass killings and the eviction of villagers by what the United States contends were government-backed Arab militiamen.

She held a private session with female refugees, some of them rape victims, who say they face threats of violence despite international pressure on Sudan to stop attacks on women when they leave the camp to find food or fuel.

Rice had the delicate task of encouraging the new unified government, which emerged after two decades of civil war, while still holding Sudan’s leaders responsible for the newer conflict and refugee crisis in Darfur.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is accompanied by Sudan's Foreign Minister Dr. Mustafa Osman Ismail, left, upon her arrival at Khartoum airport on Thursday. Rice held a congratulatory round of meetings with officials of the new unified Sudanese government Thursday, but expressed outrage after security forces manhandled aides and reporters accompanying her.

Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir retained his post in the new government, and Rice agreed to see him at his ultra-secure walled compound in Khartoum. Problems began when guards held up part of Rice’s motorcade, stranding her Arabic-language translator, some senior aides and reporters at the gate.

When the officials were finally allowed through, some found themselves barred from entering the building for the meeting. As Rice senior adviser Jim Wilkinson tried to get in, guards repeatedly pushed and jostled him, and at one point he was shoved into a wall.

“Diplomacy 101 says you don’t rough your guests up,” Wilkinson said afterward.

Reporters, whom guards reluctantly allowed into the meeting for a planned photo session, were harassed and elbowed, and guards repeatedly tried to rip a microphone away from a U.S. reporter.

Ambassador Khidir Haroun Ahmed, head of the Sudanese mission in Washington, attempted to smooth over the situation on the spot. “Please accept our apologies,” he told reporters. “This is not our policy.”

A video frame shows NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, center, is escorted by Sudanese security guards after she and other reporters were forcibly ejected from the room.

But there was another scuffle moments later.

The reporters were told not to ask questions, over State Department objections. When NBC diplomatic reporter Andrea Mitchell tried to ask el-Bashir about involvement with alleged atrocities, guards grabbed her and muscled her toward the rear of the room. Other reporters and a camera crew were also pushed out as Rice and el-Bashir watched.

“It makes me very angry to be sitting there with their president and have this happen,” Rice told reporters afterward. “They have no right to push and shove.”