by Hassen Zenati
KHARTOUM, Aug 4 (AFP) - Tens of thousands of people marched on UN offices in the Sudanese capital on Wednesday to protest against last week's Security Council resolution on Darfur, rejecting any foreign intervention in the war-torn province.
Marchers gathered outside the presidential palace and then headed to the UN offices in Khartoum shouting "Allah o Akbar (God Is Greatest) and waving banners in English and Arabic proclaiming "Darfur Is the Graveyard of US" and "No to Foreign Intervention."
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Friday giving Khartoum 30 days to disarm the pro-government Arab Janjaweed militia accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, raping and committing other atrocities against black civilians in Darfur.
It also requires Khartoum to allow free access for humanitarian groups and to secure the province to allow some 1.2 million displaced people and 150,000 refugees in neighboring Chad to return home, or face international action.
The resolution, which avoided the term "sanctions", made no mention of possible use of force, although foreign officials have spoken of sending troops to Darfur to try to force an end to the crisis.
Many of those marching on Wednesday through the streets of Khartoum, home to an estimated five million people, were wearing students' uniforms, green for the boys and blue for the girls, who were all wearing headscarves.
One contingent of youths were wearing black shirts and red headbands marked "Martyrs Brigades."
The protest was organized by an umbrella grouping of several political parties called the Association of Faith and the Motherland.
Speakers addressing the crowd were repeatedly interrupted by shouts from the crowd in Arabic -- "We will not let ourselves be humiliated, We will not obey the Americans, We only prostrate ourselves before God".
Other slogans were similar to chants frequently heard in other Islamic nations such as Iran: "Down with America", and "It is Islam that is being targeted".
The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur since rebellion broke out in February last year in protest at economic and political marginalisation. More than a million people have fled their homes, with some 200,000 crossing over into neighbouring Chad.
Despite a ceasefire agreed in April, fact-finding teams and aid workers say the killing and terrorising of civilians continues in Darfur.
The African Union plans to transform a small force it was due to send to the Darfur region into a 2,000-strong peacekeeping mission, an AU official said on Wednesday.
It had planned a force of some 300 troops to protect its team of observers and monitors overseeing the implementation of the shaky ceasefire, but now could expand it, the official said.
"We are considering, with Nigeria and Rwanda, the possibility of sending two battalions, which makes approximately 2,000 men," AU spokesman Adam Thiam told AFP by phone from Addis Ababa, the body's headquarters.
Meanwhile Sudan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Tigani Saleh Fadel said Khartoum and the two rebel groups may resume negotiations in the last week of August.
He said the rebels had suggested talks be held in one of five countries: Libya, Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso or Nigeria.