(Adds background) BERLIN, March 25 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Sunday it was essential the United Nations extend sanctions against Sudan in a new Security Council resolution. "The issue is first of all we need to get a new resolution in the United Nations which extends the sanction regime against the key individuals who are perpetrating this violence," Blair told reporters in Berlin. "It is essential for the international community to take a new resolution on Darfur in the Security Council," he said. Blair also voiced support for the imposition of a no-fly zone, saying it would prevent the use of air power by the Sudanese government against refugees and displaced people. Blair has repeatedly called for tough, targeted U.N. sanctions against Sudan's government to end the violence that Washington calls genocide in the remote Darfur region. Sudan denies government-backed militias are carrying out genocide as they battle rebel forces in Darfur and President Omar Hassan Bashir has blocked plans to deploy U.N. peacekeepers in the area that borders Chad. There are 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in the vast region but the 53-nation bloc says its force is too small to check the fighting experts estimate has killed 200,000 people. U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said on Saturday he was barred by a military guard from visiting a camp for some of the estimated 2.5 million people displaced by fighting. Washington has long criticised fellow permanent Security Council member China for not using its economic muscle to make Bashir allow U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in Sudan, which is China's fourth-largest source of crude oil imports.
