The United Nations Security Council has voted to extend the UN mission in Sudan for one week as the council tries to work out an agreement on a peacekeeping operation and how to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.
UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has asked the council to authorise a 10,000-strong peace force to help stabilise Africa's largest nation after the government and rebels ended a 21-year civil war in January.
But the 15-nation council has been at odds for weeks over questions relating to the separate conflict in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region, where an independent commission found crimes against humanity were likely committed.
The United States has been unable to drum up wide support for targeted sanctions against those responsible for those crimes -- or for its opposition to referring the matter to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
"I think that the council is united in its belief that the peacekeeping operation needs to be deployed immediately, and that we can't wait any longer," US envoy Stuart Holliday said after a council meeting.
He acknowledged there was no consensus on the array of US proposals but said he expected the council to vote next week.
Earlier this week the UN's emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, said that the death toll in Darfur was perhaps three to five times higher than the estimate of 70,000 dead that emerged late last year.
After rebels in Darfur rose up against Sudan's Arab-led government, Khartoum turned to proxy militias to help put down the rebellion -- and those militias have been blamed for a scorched-earth campaign of murder, rape and pillaging.
By In Solidarity 11 March 05
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