Planned U.N. deployment brings protests in Sudan

? Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through Khartoum on Wednesday, protesting plans to deploy U.N. peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top U.N. and U.S. envoys in the country.

The Sudanese government also increased its opposition to the deployment, with a top official warning that violence will only increase if U.N. troops move in to replace African Union peacekeepers.

“If the U.N arrives, the troubles will spread in the region,” Mohamed Elsamani, Sudan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said in Nairobi, Kenya.

Officials from the European Union, the United States and the African Union, along with Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, held talks in Brussels aimed at spurring the faltering Darfur peace negotiations.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said both the EU and Washington wanted to have a bigger peacekeeping force in place in Darfur, but it had to coincide with achieving a lasting peace deal between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government.

A veiled Sudanese woman holds an AK-47 during a demonstration in Khartoum, Sudan. Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched Wednesday through the capital, rejecting the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

“We hope that the Sudanese government will not resist,” Zoellick said. “We hope that the Sudanese government will recognize how this is in its interest to end the violence.”

A beleaguered 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force operates in Darfur, where three years of violence has left some 180,000 dead – most from disease and hunger – and displaced another 2 million from their homes.

The AU force has faced severe funding and logistical problems, and its mandate expires at the end of March. The Security Council has recommended that the United Nations start planning to take over peacekeeping.

In Khartoum, some 30,000 people marched from Martyrs Square to the offices of the United Nations, threatening to fight any U.N. force deployed in Darfur. They demanded the removal of the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the U.S. charge d’affaires.

“Death to invaders” and “Our country will be their graveyard,” many in the crowds chanted, some waving automatic weapons in the air. Some carried banners reading “death to America” and “resistance and jihad (holy war).” A heavy police and security presence closed down roads leading to Western embassies in the city.