Straw heads to Sudan for crisis talks

Jack Straw was flying to Sudan today to intensify pressure on the government to tackle the crisis in Darfur.

The Foreign Secretary will meet vice president Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail for talks in the capital Khartoum.

Tomorrow he will visit the Abu Shouk refugee camp in Darfur before returning to Khartoum for further talks with the foreign minister, as well as Sudan's president, Lieutenant-General Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, and the United Nations' special representative.

Senior Foreign Office officials indicated that Mr Straw would be making clear to the Sudanese government that it needed to do more to help victims of the Darfur conflict, which the UN says has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

It stems from tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and black African farm communities which exploded last year when two African rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms over what they regarded as unjust treatment by the government.

In retaliation, progovernment Arab militias attacked Darfur, burning villages and slaughtering farmers, driving large numbers of people from their homes.

The United Nations estimates that the conflict has affected 1.5 million people in Darfur and another 200,000 in nearby Chad. British officials believe that is "a conservative estimate".