SUDAN: Nato is ready to increase assistance in Sudan's Darfur region, but alliance ministers agreed yesterday that any presence should be limited and only in support of African or UN efforts.
In its first operation on the African continent, Nato has already provided training and transport to African Union (AU) troops struggling to quell the violence there and some nations such as the US want the alliance to engage more strongly.
On Thursday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Nato should take on a larger role in Darfur.
"Everyone recognises that the AU mission, while it has been successful thus far, is not robust enough to deal with the continued violence in Darfur, and particularly the problems that are emerging in western Darfur," she told a news conference at a Nato ministers' meeting in Bulgaria.
But other Nato members are cautious, with the Sudanese government resisting international involvement and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appealing to anti-West sentiment by accusing it of launching a crusade in the region.
"We are in the early planning stages for what we can offer next but the consensus is that the Nato footprint should be as limited as possible," said one observer of the foreign ministers' talks in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.
A senior US State Department official acknowledged that a Nato presence was politically complicated.
"We are assessing what more we can do. There's a lot of stars that have to align beyond the transatlantic community."
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme said yesterday it would cut food rations for more than six million people in Sudan, half of them in Darfur, due to a lack of funds.
Donor countries appear to have tired of the conflict in Darfur, despite signs that malnutrition is again on the rise among people living in the squalid refugee camps, it said. The cuts were imposed after the humanitarian agency received only 32 per cent of its annual appeal of €600 million ($746 million) for Sudan.