Sudan accepts in principle a mutual return to barracks of government and rebel forces in Darfur, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday after talks with the Sudanese president. Speaking after talks with President Omar el-Bashir, Blair said he had presented five points on the Darfur crisis to the Sudanese government, and the government had committed itself to them. The first point calls for a significant expansion of African Union forces in Darfur, where a few hundred AU soldiers have been monitoring a shaky cease-fire among two rebel groups, government troops and allied militia. "We need several thousand people there in order to monitor any cease-fire," Blair told reporters in the British Embassy in Khartoum, hours after he arrived in Sudan for a three-day visit to Africa. The prime minister said his government had been following the situation in Darfur "with concern and alarm."
