The United States should contribute troops and equipment to a planned new UN force for Sudan's violent Darfur region, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.
Mr Annan said he would press US President George W. Bush on the issue when the two meet next week in Washington.
The United Nations has begun planning for a UN force to take over in Darfur from an African Union mission which has proved too small and ill-equipped to protect ethnic African villagers from government-backed militia fighters.
The United States has declared the Darfur conflict genocide, pushed hard on the diplomatic front to end it, and provided logistic support for the AU mission. US officials have also backed a transition from an AU to a UN force.
But with huge military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has avoided taking a position on whether it would supply US troops for such a mission.
Mr Annan, who heads to Washington on Monday for talks with Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said he would outline the needs of the planned mission and the countries he wanted to supply them. "That would include the US," he said.
"It is not going to be easy for the big and powerful countries with armies to delegate it [the job] to third world countries. They will have to play a part if we are going to stop the carnage that we see in Darfur," Mr Annan told reporters.
"They will have to commit troops and equipment, or if they don't want to do it, help us find the troops and equipment to be able to undertake the mandate they give us."
A UN force in Darfur would have to be very different from the current AU mission, Mr Annan said.
Such a force would need to show the militias and others plundering villages and attacking refugee camps and humanitarian workers "that we have a force that is capable to respond, a force that is everywhere, and a force that will be there on time to prevent them from intimidating and killing the innocent civilians," he said.
The force would have to be highly mobile on the ground and also have air assets, so it could respond quickly and stop attacks rather than arrive "after the harm has been done," he said.
Civil war has raged in Darfur since February 2003, pitting Sudanese rebels against government forces and allied Arab militias. Tens of thousands have been killed and 2 million driven from their homes, forced to flee to miserable and vulnerable refugee camps in Sudan and Chad.