DARFUR CAMPS ARE EVEN WORSE NOW!

Darfur camps 'worse' since deal.

More than 2m people have been forced to flee because of the conflict. Aid workers in Sudan's Darfur region have told visiting UN ambassadors that the situation has worsened there since the signing of May's peace deal. They warned that the camps for the 2m people displaced in the crisis faced a potentially explosive situation.

Rebel factions in favour or opposed to the agreement have been attacking each other's supporters and women were being increasingly targeted by rapists. Sudan is resisting plans for the UN to take over from African peacekeepers. And the ambassadors have so far been unable to visit camps for the displaced people because of resentment over a UN-backed partial peace deal. The 15 ambassadors from the UN Security Council are visiting Darfur to get backing for the peace agreement signed last month.

The BBC's Mark Doyle, who is travelling with ambassadors, says briefings by aid workers and human right activists painted an alarming picture of deteriorating conditions in the camps. The ambassadors were told it was too dangerous for them to visit the camps in case those who rejected the agreement mounted demonstrations. If diplomats with armed guards are not safe in the camps, the situation of vulnerable civilians is far worse, and the partial peace agreement could become even more fragile if tensions in the camps boil over, our correspondent adds. Human rights lawyers said the government was acting with impunity, arresting and torturing people on the basis of their tribe.

Members of the Security Council have been putting pressure on those leaders who did not sign the peace agreement. But the UN's top humanitarian official in Sudan, Jan Pronk, told Security Council members that antagonising those who had not signed the peace agreement would made the crisis in the camps even worse.

The second delegation, comprising 25 UN experts, will be accompanied by senior members of the African Union, who will pass on the experience gained from their troubled peacekeeping force. The UN wants to take over from African Union peacekeepersThe 7,000 AU peacekeepers currently in Darfur are poorly equipped and over-stretched, and have made little impact on the violence.

Some 200,00 people have died in three-year conflict, most of them in attacks by government and pro-government forces against the civilian population. Sudanese rebel forces took up arms in February 2003, accusing the government of discriminating against Darfur's black Africans in favour of Arabs.

BBC NEWS REPORT.