The United States made a new plea to African nations on Thursday to back the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Sudan's Darfur region and sought to ease Sudanese concerns about the make-up of the force, according to Reuters. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said the U.N. force could build on an African Union mission monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur and include more African and Asian troops. "We don't have time to waste," Zoellick told a news conference in Paris on the sidelines of a meeting to discuss development funding for Sudan. "There are heart-breaking conditions in Darfur and they risk worsening." African Union ministers are due to decide on Friday whether to ask the United Nations to take control of their 7,000-strong mission in Darfur, where 2 million people have been driven from their homes into camps. --SP 18 36 Local Time 15 36 GMT
