United Nations ? How many people have died in Darfur? Two years ago, the United Nations estimated 200,000. But the man who gave that figure now says it’s far too low. Sudan has long said it’s way too high.

A new mortality survey might settle the question, but the U.N. has no plans for one – it is too busy trying to help the living. Activist groups say Sudan’s government doesn’t want one.

Former U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland told The Associated Press he has no doubt that tens of thousands more people have died since he made the 200,000 estimate in 2006. He cited a dramatic increase in the number of people affected by the conflict and a surge in fighting.

But Egeland, now a special adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said only a large-scale mortality survey and access to areas where aid workers are unable to reach could provide an accurate death figure for the 5-year-old conflict.

Aid workers long have been prevented from reaching parts of Darfur because of Sudanese government obstruction and the unrelenting violence between ethnic African rebels and the janjaweed militias that support the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.

Sudan’s government strongly disputes the figure of 200,000 deaths, contending the toll is a tiny fraction of that – less than 10,000.

Aid workers say Sudan’s figure probably reflects people killed by bullets, but doesn’t take into account all those who have died from hunger or disease tied to the upheaval of the conflict.

The last official, independent mortality survey for Darfur was released in March 2005 based on data collected from 8,844 displaced people living in camps by a team from the World Health Organization. It estimated 10,000 people had died among the refugees each month between the end of 2003 and October 2004 – mostly of malnutrition and disease.

Egeland said when he was interviewed at the end of 2005, “I just added the 10,000 we found that died per month in 2004. … I said well it’s 18 months, it’s 180,000.” A few months later he raised it to 200,000.

“Then, the clock stopped ticking, sort of,” he said in the AP interview earlier this month.

“You have the figure 200,000 people died in Darfur which has been used continuously since I gave it,” Egeland added. “Please stop using that figure. I gave it. It’s two and half years old. It’s wrong.”

Christina Bennett, a spokeswoman for Egeland’s successor, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has no plans for a new mortality survey.

“We’re working as hard as we can to assist the living,” she said. “It is likely that more than 200,000 people have died, but what we focus on is not the number of people who have died but the 4 million people who are needlessly suffering in Darfur.”