Saudi Arabia ? U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon tried to persuade Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur on Wednesday, hours after al-Bashir flatly rejected the deployment.

Ban met with the Sudanese president for more than three hours in late-night talks joined by Saudi King Abdullah and Arab League chief Amr Moussa on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Riyadh.

Ban is seeking Arab help in winning al-Bashir’s acceptance of a U.N. force to assist African Union peacekeepers who have been unable to halt the violence in the war-torn region.

In a small sign of cooperation, Sudan and the United Nations signed an agreement in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to ease humanitarian access to Darfur’s refugees.

But in a speech earlier in the day at the Arab summit, al-Bashir underlined his objections to a 20,000-strong combined U.N.-AU peacekeeping force, saying the United Nations should only provide financial and technical help to African peacekeepers already on the ground.

Al-Bashir slammed U.N. resolutions calling for U.N. troop deployment in Darfur as “a violation for Sudan’s sovereignty” and said they “provoke the conflict in Darfur, instead of finding a solution for it.”