Washington ? President Bush will impose new economic sanctions against Sudan and call for a U.N. resolution to compel the country to stop stalling international efforts to halt the bloodshed in Darfur, senior administration officials said.

The president planned to announced the punitive actions today because he believes the situation in Darfur has worsened, said the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the president’s announcement.

The new action will stiffen enforcement of existing sanctions, bar more companies in Sudan from using the U.S. financial system and clamp down on individuals suspected of violence in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million people chased from their homes in four years of fighting.

The president also is directing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed U.N. resolution to strengthen international pressure on the hardline Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir, the officials said.

In announcing the sanctions today at the White House, Bush will say that Bashir’s actions during the past few weeks “follow a long pattern of promising cooperation while finding new methods of obstruction,” according to a draft of the remarks.

Bush signaled his readiness to impose additional sanctions in a speech on April 18, but stopped short of imposing them because he said he wanted to give the U.N. secretary general time to find a diplomatic solution to ending the four-year crisis in Sudan.

Bush said the Sudanese government must allow U.N. troops, police and civilian workers into the region, remove its opposition to a 22,000-strong joint United Nations-African Union force for Darfur, stop supporting violent militias and let humanitarian aid reach the people of Darfur.

Over the weekend, Bashir reiterated his opposition to the 22,000-strong force for Darfur, having agreed only to a much smaller force of no more than 3,000 U.N. troops.

The new sanctions target an additional 31 companies, most owned or controlled by the Sudanese government, from the U.S. banking system.