Sudan rejects UN offer

Beijing: Sudan's president on Friday said that the country will not accept UN peacekeeping forces into the Darfur region as such a move could turn the country into a "second Iraq."

"With regards the UN peacekeeping force, we decided that with such an army moving in to our country, the impact is going to be the same as what's been happening in Iraq," President Omar Hassan Al Bashir told a news conference in Beijing.

The offer of a 22,500-strong UN peacekeeping force for Darfur, aimed at bolstering about 7,000, was flatly rejected with Sudan, which said it amounted to colonialism.

Bashir said only 10,000 people had died in Darfur compared with around 655,000 in Iraq following the March 2003 US -led invasion - a figure from a study by US and Iraqi public health teams.

Most international estimates put the death toll from Sudan's vicious civil conflict at tens of thousands, and say it has displaced over two million people.