SUDAN: Shouting "Down, Down USA", thousands of Sudanese protested in Khartoum yesterday against any deployment of UN troops in the western Darfur region.
"Get out all foreigners, we don't want you here," shouted 21-year-old student Zeinab Kheir el-Sir.
"Darfur will be the grave of the conquerors," said banners carried by the demonstrators.
African Union foreign ministers are due to decide tomorrow whether to ask the UN to take control of their 7,000-strong mission monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur. UN officials have sought Nato and EU support to bolster the African Union force, which lacks funds and equipment, triggering alarm in Sudan which opposes intervention by non-African troops.
Ahead of the African Union meeting, senior western officials held talks in Brussels with Sudanese leaders to persuade them to agree to the UN mission. But after a government-led media campaign against UN intervention, nationalist sentiment is running high. The pro-government al-Intibaha newspaper has announced the formation of two new Islamist movements threatening to target foreign interests, called the Darfur Jihad Organisation and the Blood Brigades.
The protesters handed a statement to UN offices demanding the immediate eviction of the top UN envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk. Sudanese women bearing Kalashnikovs joined the march, declaring their readiness to fight foreign troops. The defence minister also rallied troops against intervention at a military demonstration in Khartoum.
"Jihad, victory, martyrdom," the soldiers chanted. "Our martyrs are in heaven, and we are ready," said defence minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein.
Mr Hussein last week threw out all foreign media from a news conference, accusing them of fabricating the Darfur conflict, which Washington calls genocide. Khartoum denies genocide in the arid west, but tens of thousands have been killed and two million herded into camps by three years of rape, looting and killing.
Among the demonstrators, one brave woman quietly said she supported intervention in her place of origin, Darfur. "I don't think the government can solve the problem, nor can the African Union," student Maha Mekki said. "I want America to come in," she added.