(adds quote from Adada, Sudan ban on US firms in Darfur) By Louis Charbonneau EL FASHER, Sudan, June 5 (Reuters) - Diplomats from the U.N. Security Council flew into Sudan's western Darfur region on Thursday to see the effects of five years of conflict and what can be done to end it. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was later due to present a report to the Security Council that will make clear he wants to pursue senior officials for war crimes in Darfur, infuriating the government in Khartoum. On the fifth day of a 10-day tour of African hotspots, the 15-nation council arrived in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, where a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) is based. "We really have to see how the people of Darfur live," South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo told reporters. The delegations will meet the local governor, displaced people, peacekeepers and aid workers trying to alleviate one of the world's worst humanitarian crises before returning to Khartoum for talks with Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes in five years of ethnic and political conflict in Darfur. Khartoum says only 10,000 people have been killed. Bashir has been under pressure to allow a quicker deployment of UNAMID, which is to reach 26,000 troops and police at full strength. There are still only around 9,000 peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur, a region roughly the size of France. The joint AU-U.N. special representative for Darfur, Rodolphe Adada told reporters there was growing pressure to get more peacekeepers on the ground. "If we wait any longer, we might not be able to maintain the most important capital for any peacekeeper -- the local trust." BETTER ATMOSPHERE Khartoum confirmed on Wednesday that Thai and Nepalese battalions could deploy in Darfur once Egyptian and Ethiopian troops had deployed. Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers told reporters there had been "an improvement in the atmosphere for cooperation" between Sudan and the joint U.N./African Union mission, but added the council gave Sudanese officials a list of a dozen improvements needed in Darfur, such as speeding up deployment of peacekeepers and improving access for aid workers. In a sign of worsening relations between Khartoum and Washington, Sudan said it was banning U.S. companies from working with UNAMID and would not renew an engineering contract held by a unit of U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin Corp. The United States, which has had sanctions on Sudan for over a decade, suspended talks on normalising ties this week over the failure of Sudan's north and south to agree on ending clashes that have stoked fears of a return to north-south civil war. Khartoum is also angered by the U.S. use of the word "genocide" to describe the situation in Darfur. Sudan on Wednesday accused International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of wrecking peace efforts in Darfur by trying to pursue officials accused of war crimes in Darfur. The prosecutor is due to deliver a report to the Security Council on Thursday. He said last week he would open a case against senior members of the government because Khartoum has failed to arrest a minister he indicted over crimes in Darfur. The Hague based court issued arrest warrants for two Sudanese suspects in April last year, but Khartoum has refused to hand them over. Sudanese officials have said they would not cooperate with the court, prompting French envoy Jean-Maurice Ripert to suggest that Paris might support "further steps" against Khartoum by the council -- meaning sanctions. He did not elaborate. (Editing by Andrew Heavens)
British Ambassador to U.N. John Sawers (C) talks to Sudan's president assistant Nafi Ali Nafi (R) as South Africa's Ambassador to U.N. Dumisani Kumalo looks on before the meeting of members ...
International Humanitarian Law
