Sudan close to scuttling U.N. troop deal on Darfur (Evelyn Leopold)

  Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has refused to accept an interim U.N. plan to bolster African troops in Darfur, despite an earlier agreement in principle.

  By Evelyn Leopold

  UNITED NATIONS, March 9 (Reuters) -- Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has contested U.N. plans for deployment in Darfur, dashing hopes for a beefed up peacekeeping force in the near future, according to a letter obtained Friday.

  Bashir's objections, centered mainly on putting the African Union in all command and control functions, were based on the Darfur Peace Agreement, signed last May between one rebel faction and the Khartoum government.

  Since then the process has moved on, with a U.N.-Sudanese negotiated deal in Addis Ababa on Nov. 16 which was then endorsed by Sudan at an African Union meeting in Abuja, Nigeria two weeks later.

  "Proposals that tend to amend, nullify or suspend any article of the DPA will not be acceptable as it may reopen discussions over issues that were previously settled without difficulty," Bashir wrote in the letter obtained by Reuters.

  "The Darfur peace agreement is the framework and reference upon which the United Nations should ... deliver its proposed support packages," Bashir said in the letter.

  He attached a 14-page annex in Arabic he said showed how U.N. plans "contravene many paragraphs of the DPA."

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