By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Darfuri kidnappers of a French/British Red Cross aid worker have demanded a $1 million ransom, which Sudan has refused to pay, a high-level security source told Reuters on Tuesday.
Armed men snatched Gauthier Lefevre last week in Sudan's restive Darfur region, the fifth abduction of foreign workers since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in March.
"The kidnappers called government authorities last night and demanded a ransom," the senior source in Sudan's intelligence service said, adding it was the equivalent of about $1 million.
"This is now a red line. The government will not be paying any ransom," the source added.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman Tamara al-Rifai confirmed a ransom had been demanded.
"As a policy we don't pay ransom. We go through our normal channels of dialogue, persuasion and the peaceful resolution of such a crisis," she said.
Lefevre, a dual national working in Sudan on his French passport, was captured just days after the release of two female staff from Irish aid agency Goal who endured more than 100 days in a mountain-top prison in Darfur.
A tribal leader said he was told their kidnappers had been paid money to release them, a charge Sudan strongly denies.
But aid staff in Darfur worry even rumours of ransoms being paid and the fact Sudan has yet to apprehend any of the kidnappers is enough to encourage further abductions in the lawless region, reeling from more than six years of rebellion.
A brutal counter-insurgency campaign drove more than 2 million people from their homes, sparking one of the world's worst humanitarian crises which the United Nations estimates has claimed 300,000 lives.
The kidnapping of foreign workers in Darfur has become a new line of business for young men with guns. Two staff from the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission remain in captivity after almost two months.
The security source told Reuters: "If we fail to get them out by peaceful means we will get them out by force," of both Lefevre and the two peacekeepers, adding the government knew who their captors were and their location.
But he added: "The government's priority is, of course, the safety of the hostages."
Three Chinese oil workers were killed a year ago after a botched attempt by Sudan to rescue nine taken in South Kordofan.
REUTERS PICTURES OF THE DECADE. A Rwandan worker cleans a mass grave outside the church in Nyanza, Rwanda April 4, 2004. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in 1994 in 100 ...
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